Making Learning a Game
Janina-Marie “Nina” Huss, MBA, FAPIC, CIC, LTC-CIP, Infection Prevention officer at WVU Medicine in Pennsylvania
Coordinating education for your team is often a responsibility, but engaging them in that education makes it stick. Gamification can help. Hear what happened when Medline clinical experts introduced a team of nurses to a Bingo game about urinary maintenance devices.
Q. Can you describe the typical protocols in place for selecting the right urinary maintenance device at your system??
A. It’s a combination of clinical guidelines and usually the nurse’s or the nursing team’s judgment. The nurses are generally empowered to choose the most appropriate device based on patient needs and clinical indicators. So having education that focuses on that is a big deal.
Q. How effective do you think the Urology Bingo workshop was in enhancing the nursing staff’s understanding and skills in the device selection?
A. I believe the workshop was highly effective. It was hands-on, interactive and empowering. You could hear individuals shouting out answers. You could just feel this spark between people. Some of these decisions aren’t always straightforward, and sometimes there is more than one solution for a particular patient, so it was a great way to just spur conversations and open dialogue.
Q. Do you think this helped engage staff beyond the workshop itself?
A. Sometimes we struggle to find champions or to create influence or to get someone to open up to tell you, this is what I like, or this is what I’m really passionate about. When you have these high-engagement activities with a low threshold for joining, you start to see really quickly who’s passionate about it, so it’s a fun way to let the champions be known.
Q. How does this workshop style education compare with other education your staff might get?
A. This is way more engaging and effective than the other forms that we have. Most staff members are doing web-based via Teams or Zoom for something new. Or they have their annual competencies and they’re click, click, clicking through until the end where the assessment is. They’re not paying attention to any of it. Ultimately at the end of the day, these folks are doing their education in addition to the workload they already have. So it doesn’t really allow for true learning, whereas the workshop is aligned more with how nurses really have to think day-to-day instead of just regurgitating knowledge about a particular item.
Q. Were there any particular aspects of the workshop that you found especially beneficial?
A. I think it’s that safe space to have visible teamwork, plus the light-heartedness of having Bingo accessories and kind of being a little silly for a moment. It inspires creativity and allows participants to be playful so they can open their mind to learning something new. It allows people to accept one another a little more, and that collective approach helps foster those critical thinking skills. No one said, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ They would say, ‘But did you think of this?’ It was ‘and did you,’ instead of ‘No, but,’ so that was really wonderful to see.
Q. Would you expect to see any immediate changes or improvements after the workshop?
A. Yes, I think the main thing is the willingness to engage in the discussions around device selection, and it would be great to get some physician champions involved. In addition, and it would depend on the culture of the unit, but I think this workshop ignited a sense of curiosity and empowerment. Nurses will likely approach device selection more informed. And they’ll really be thinking about, not just the comfort of the patient, but the clinical need and potential risks when you reframe it as why it’s indicated or why it’s contraindicated.
Q. What challenges do you foresee in maintaining and improving device selection in the long term?
A. I think the standardization of the supplies across the units and then the dissemination of the information. They’re feeling really engaged and then go into the stockroom and those products they learned about, they’re not available or they’re just out or nurses don’t know where they are. Inconsistencies in availability of product can cause them to fall back on habits that maybe aren’t the best.
Q. Are there any metrics that you would use to evaluate the impact of this workshop?
A. I think the biggest one is do our participants have the knowledge and confidence to choose the right devices? I would really want to do a pre- and a post-workshop assessment to measure the nurses’ knowledge and confidence in device selection. And I’d want to know if the learnings from the workshop are enhancing patient safety and patient outcomes. Have we reduced UTIs or Foley usage or skin breakdown? Those could all be patient outcome metrics that over time we really do want to keep an eye on.