Advance directives are legal documents with instructions that apply if an adult is not able to make decisions about their own healthcare. They are meant to ensure that a person’s values related to dying, quality of life, and other relevant matters are honored.
 

eams with talented people and a skilled leader are often unable to maintain optimum results over a long period of time. Team leaders must continually assess, evaluate, and monitor the team’s motivation level toward achieving its goals. They must also facilitate emotional buy-in and commitment. This course provides healthcare staff with an overview of how to motivate and enhance a team.

This course focuses on 2 continuous quality improvement strategies that can be used to change complex systems—the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) method and Six Sigma’s define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) method. These simple, but effective, methods of making minor changes in systems can transform ambiguous and error-prone processes into tested, clear processes designed to reduce errors.

This course focuses on two continuous quality improvement strategies that can be used to change complex systems—the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) method and Six Sigma’s define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) method. These simple, but effective, methods of making minor changes in systems can transform ambiguous and error-prone processes into tested, clear processes designed to reduce errors.

The perioperative nurse plays a primary role in the anesthesia experience. Knowledge of techniques, patient assessment, and care management for the patient receiving or recovering from anesthesia positively impacts patient outcomes. This course discusses anesthetics and adjuvant medications used in the perioperative setting, anesthesia-related complications, and the nurse’s role in assisting with anesthesia management.

This course provides nursing professionals with information about the principles and practices of anesthesia care in the perioperative setting.

Antibiotic stewardship is a movement to improve antibiotic use through evidence-based practice. Team members become the stewards of antibiotics. This helps these medications continue to effectively fight infections. Antibiotic stewardship follows core elements to improve the use of antibiotics and their outcomes. This course discusses the core elements and benefits of an antibiotic stewardship program.
 

Facilitating change for quality outcomes is the cornerstone of any successful organization. Change is necessary for organizational growth and development and for creating a robust organizational culture. In this course, you will explore the trends and change models for quality improvement, barriers to system change, problem-solving, crisis management, and how to incorporate quality measures that support change facilitation in the acute care setting.

Everyone has an important role in keeping patient information safe. Protecting private details and securing work devices is essential. This course will guide you through easy steps to reduce cybersecurity risks and help you handle information safely.
 

The purpose of this course is to teach secure practices for remote work and telehealth.

Improving hospital processes surrounding discharge and transitions of care can reduce adverse events and readmissions. Process improvements may also lead to better patient adherence to the treatment plan and their overall experience with care. Healthcare professionals must understand care coordination and transitions of care and how they impact HCAHPS survey results.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is a national standardized survey required for hospitals participating in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) programs. Survey results are linked to hospital reimbursement from CMS. 

Team-based healthcare is provided by two or more people who represent different professions with the common goal of improving the well-being of a patient. Interprofessional (IP) collaboration may improve outcomes such as pain relief, improved access to healthcare services, and early recognition of treatment failure. Effective team-based, patient-centered care should be tailored to the population served and the needs of those individuals. This course outlines the components of team-based care and provides examples in different settings.

This course aims to help healthcare team members identify core principles of team-based IP healthcare in all settings.

Military cultural competence is essential to effectively engage, understand, and support active duty service members, reservists, and veterans in behavioral health treatment. Those in the military represent a specific cultural group. This course will provide you with an introduction to military culture. You will learn about the overall structure of the military, the core values of the primary branches, and the unique experiences of specific sub-populations within the military. This information will help you more effectively engage with, understand, respect, and support the military service members who seek your services.

The goal of this course is to provide addiction, behavioral health counseling, case management/care management, marriage and family therapy, nursing, psychologist, and social worker professionals in health and human services settings with information about military culture in general, the effects of military culture on sub-populations, and how behavioral health concerns affect military service members and veterans.

The goal of the course is to discuss how innovations can be recognized, developed, adopted, and disseminated amongst staff, as well as review areas where innovations are likely to change the provision of care. We will also explore the patient’s role in innovation, and how patient and family-centered care will drive ongoing changes.

Documenting care is just as important as providing care. This course discusses the purpose of the medical record and documentation. It also describes documentation practices and legal standards that affect the certified nursing assistant.
This course provides direct care workers in post-acute care education on documentation and legal aspects of care.

Peer review is essential for being a part of a profession, but few healthcare organizations have meaningful nursing peer review. Nursing has lagged behind other professional groups, especially physicians, in creating a peer-review agenda. Authentic nursing peer review requires evidence-based standards by all nurses, regardless of role or practice setting. 

This course is intended to provide a summary of the key nursing interventions and considerations when caring for a postpartum patient who is experiencing sepsis. Whereas this may not be a daily occurrence, it is important for the labor and delivery nurse to refresh their knowledge of this critical situation, as well as have a source for quick reference in the future. This promotes ongoing efforts to maintain the highest levels of patient safety and care.

In the operating room, patient safety depends on high quality communication and shared knowledge among the surgical team. Several factors in this setting can contribute to communication failures like time constraints, shift changes, environmental barriers, the complex nature of surgical procedures, and clashing communication styles. All members of the surgical team must understand the risks to patient safety associated with communication failures, what information must be communicated and when, and how to use an assertive communication style.

The goal of this course is to equip nurses and CSTs with best practices for effectively communicating in the operating room. 

The role of a preceptor is vital to an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively onboard an individual to a new department or work unit. This course is designed to include principles and practices for precepting new employees across healthcare settings. It introduces the learner to the fundamentals of the preceptor role and provides best practices for being an effective preceptor. Preceptors exhibit professionalism and best practices in their work units. Being a preceptor requires skill, talent, and preparation to yield the best outcomes.

Healthcare professionals often encounter patients experiencing agitation or displaying hostile behavior during their careers. De-escalation is a set of approaches and techniques used to assist patients in self-calming to avoid incidents of harm to self, others, or property. Professionals should understand escalation and physiological responses to threats. After determining the risk of escalation, healthcare professionals can use various aspects of verbal communication, such as tone and pitch, and nonverbal communication skills to defuse potentially hostile situations and apply the least restrictive interventions. 

This course reviews the concept of high-quality documentation and how it relates to technology and patient privacy. Most documentation takes place within electronic health records (EHRs) and healthcare professionals must understand how to practice high-quality documentation in the digital age. There are challenges with technology but also many exciting developments that can improve nurse documentation. This course reviews how healthcare professionals can reduce the risk of patient confidentiality breaches and cybercrimes.

A ‘culture of safety’ is an often-heard term in clinical settings. Most patients require complex care, with many interprofessional teams working together. Large patient volumes, an expectation for rapid delivery of care, the consumer’s ability to choose providers, and government reimbursements all drive acute care facilities to invest in preventing or reducing errors. Improving safety is beneficial to the patient primarily, with less risk of injury or death, but also to the facility and staff, improving retention and job satisfaction, with the added benefit of extensive cost-savings.

This lesson will describe, in detail, 1 of the structured communication strategies that is used frequently in high-stakes situations: The ISBAR+R method. Appropriate use of this method can help healthcare providers avoid preventable errors by improving the effective communication of timely, accurate, and pertinent information among all members of the healthcare team.

The role of risk management has a significant impact on the quality outcomes of acute care organizations. It includes systems and validated processes aimed at assessing and developing interventions to mitigate risk factors and optimize quality outcomes. HCPs are stakeholders in the risk management process and can benefit from understanding risk management strategies and objectives. In this course, you will learn about risk management in the acute care setting.

The goal of this course is to provide healthcare professionals in acute care settings with information to enhance their understanding of the role they play in risk management along with proven strategies for ensuring quality outcomes in their professional practice in acute care settings. 

Writing incident reports is an important part of providing direct support services. Your reports help the person's support team respond effectively to their needs and keep them safe in the future. 

The goal of this course is to teach DSPs in IDD settings the key elements of an incident report, why they are important, and how to write them effectively.