Types and Methods of Employee Training, Explained

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Types and Methods of Employee Training

Healthcare Organization and Management · Chapter 13: Workforce Training and Development in HealthcareSection 13.3 · lesson 76 of 10511 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Matching training methods to knowledge, skill, judgment, and attitude objectives.

  • Match training methods to knowledge, skill, judgment, and attitude objectives
  • Explain the strengths and limits of simulation, e-learning, and preceptorship
  • Distinguish competency validation from training completion
  • Plan around shift-work release limits and support transfer of training to practice

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,466 words). Read along, or search it.

Opening Case

Forty Nurses and a New Infusion Pump

In five weeks, 4 North switches to new smart infusion pumps. Forty nurses, three shifts, seven days a week, and no money for backfill. The vendor offers a forty-minute online module. Every nurse can finish it, and the record will show all forty trained. But on go-live night, will anyone be able to program the pump? The answer depends on matching the method to the kind of objective.

Method Options

ADDIE and the Main Training Methods

Training designers often follow ADDIE: analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate. The analysis came first. Now comes design, starting with the methods available. On-the-job instruction teaches a task where it's done, by someone who does it. Preceptorship and mentoring pair a learner with an experienced practitioner over time. Classroom instruction gathers a group with an instructor. E-learning is content a learner works through alone. Blended designs combine methods on purpose. Simulation recreates a situation closely enough to perform in it, with no risk to a patient. And structured practice with feedback is repeated performance, with someone watching and correcting.

Matching Methods

Four Kinds of Objective

Methods aren't interchangeable. Each can reach some kinds of objective and not others. There are four kinds. A knowledge objective, where the learner must know something, can be met by any reliable way of passing on information. So the cheapest adequate method usually wins. A skill objective, where the learner must be able to do something, needs practice with feedback. Reading about a procedure doesn't create the ability to perform it. A judgment objective, deciding well when things are unclear, needs varied cases and discussion of the reasoning. And an attitude objective is shaped far more by what colleagues and managers do, than by any session. That's culture, not course design.

Common Mistake

Informed but Unable to Perform

The commonest mismatch in healthcare is a knowledge method used for a skill objective. It's cheap, it scales, and it produces a completion record. The result is a workforce that has been informed and can't perform, and a training record that says the opposite. That's the pump module.

Quick Check

Training Charge Nurses for Bed Calls

Quick check. When the emergency department is full, charge nurses must decide which admitted patients move upstairs first, with too few beds for all of them. Which design fits that objective? Pause, and decide. Talking through past bed calls. Choosing between patients is a judgment objective, so learners need many different situations and a look at the reasoning behind each one. The module is tempting, because the policy matters. But knowing a policy doesn't make an unclear call well.

Simulation

Practice Without Risk and the Debrief

Simulation offers what no other method can: performing a real task, including making and recovering from an error, with no consequence for a patient. It's especially good for rare events, which someone might otherwise first meet in an emergency, and for team coordination rather than individual technique. A large two thousand eleven review found big gains over no training. Much of the learning happens in the debrief, where the reasoning behind each decision gets examined. So reserve it for skill, judgment and teamwork, because it's costly. And without skilled debriefers, it's an expensive knowledge session.

E-Learning

Strengths and Limits of E-Learning

E-learning has real strengths. It's cheap per learner at scale, reaches shift workers without gathering them, gives everyone identical content, and records completion automatically. For knowledge objectives across a large workforce, it's often the right answer. Its typical failure is replacing practice. Swap a hands-on session for a module, and you've turned a skill objective into a knowledge one, and recorded it as met. And because its automatic records make it the easiest method to report on, it pulls organizations toward it for reasons that have nothing to do with fit.

Preceptorship

Preparing the Preceptors

Preceptorship pairs a new or transitioning nurse with an experienced one, who instructs, supervises, assesses and gradually hands over responsibility. It's healthcare's main method for role transitions, and its quality varies more than any other. The weak point is the preceptor's own preparation. Preceptors are picked for clinical skill, often get no preparation in teaching or feedback, and carry a full workload at the same time. The results: learners progress depending on who they drew, and few preceptors will fail anyone. The fixes are plain: prepare preceptors, lighten their load, give them a structure, and someone to escalate to.

Onboarding

Designing the First Ninety Days

Onboarding is a design problem, not an orientation event. The first ninety days shape how a new nurse performs, and whether they stay. Three sequencing errors recur. Everything is crammed into week one, when the new person has no framework to hang it on. Local knowledge they need right away, like where things are and who to call at night, waits behind hospital-wide content that could wait. And they're counted in the staffing numbers before they're ready, because the schedule needed them. End that status on evidence of readiness, not on a date.

Validation

Completion Proves Exposure, Not Competence

Competency validation is an observed demonstration that a person can do a task to standard. Training completion records that they attended or finished something. Hospitals routinely treat completion as proof of competence. It isn't. Attendance proves exposure. Accreditors such as the Joint Commission expect competence to be assessed, at orientation and at set intervals after that. The line blurs most with a new device, a changed procedure, or a task handed to a different role. Validation costs observer time, and it's the only step that establishes capability.

Adult Learning

Knowles and How Adults Learn

Malcolm Knowles popularized the idea that adults learn differently from children in school, and the differences shape design. Adults bring experience, so a design that ignores it wastes its best resource. They're problem-centered, so build around situations they actually meet. They need to know why before they engage. They prefer some say in their own learning. And they want to apply it soon. So open with the problem, not the objectives. Use the group's own cases. Explain the reason for a change before its content. And train close to the point of use.

Release Constraint

Training a Shift Workforce

Every real training plan in a shift workforce runs into one constraint. Releasing a nurse means someone else must cover the work. Better design can't solve that. But some responses work. Teach in short segments that fit inside a shift, in the workplace, or at shift change. Use self-paced methods where the objective allows. Fund backfill openly, and name it in the cost. Or accept a slower rollout, a few people at a time. What fails is a design that assumes people the schedule can't release. Attendance is poor, and the hospital blames lack of interest.

Transfer of Training

Getting Learning Used at Work

Transfer of training is how much of what was learned gets used at work. It's where most training investment is lost. On the design side, the training setting should resemble the work, practice should vary, and use should follow soon after. The management side is more powerful. The learner needs a chance to use it soon, and a manager who expects it and asks about it. Obstacles must go, and the old way must stop being rewarded. A nurse trained in a new method, who returns to a unit where the equipment and forms all support the old one, slides back to the old way. No design fixes that.

True Cost

Counting Released Time and Backfill

Finally, cost. Cost per learner is the usual comparison, and it misleads, because it counts only what appears in a training budget. Take a day-long class for thirty nurses. That's two hundred forty paid hours of nurse time, and up to two hundred forty more hours of backfill, recorded as a room and a facilitator. Count effectiveness too. A cheap method that changes nothing has an infinite cost per result. The rule: spend the cheapest adequate amount on knowledge, and protect the budget for the practice and validation that skills require.

Quick Check

Fifty Nurses and New Glucose Meters

Quick check. The lab is replacing every bedside glucose meter in four weeks. Fifty nurses on 4 South need to use them correctly, and there's no backfill money. Which plan fits? Pause, and decide. A video, then on-shift sign-offs. The video carries the knowledge cheaply. The sign-off builds and proves the skill, without pulling anyone off the unit. Full-day classes look thorough, but the schedule can't release fifty nurses, so many would miss them. The quiz records knowledge, not the ability to use the meter.

Case Resolved

Paired Practice Before Go-Live

Back to the pumps on 4 North. The module stays, for what changed and why. Then two experienced nurses run twenty-minute paired practice sessions during quieter hours on every shift. Each nurse programs the pump twice while observed, and is signed off before go-live. Only that last step proves anyone can do it. The trade-off is less standardization: two trainers, over three weeks, instead of one polished class most nurses couldn't attend.

Key Takeaways

Choosing Methods That Build Capability

To recap. Match the method to the objective: knowledge, skill, judgment, or attitude. Simulation earns its cost in its debrief; e-learning can't replace practice. Prepare preceptors, and end onboarding on readiness, not a date. Completion proves exposure; only validation proves capability. And transfer depends most on what the manager does afterward.

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Universities that work with NCCRS

Healthcare Organization and Management carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Types and Methods of Employee Training

How do you match a training method to the type of learning objective?
Match the method to the kind of objective. Knowledge objectives can be met by any reliable way of passing on information, so the cheapest adequate method usually wins. Skill objectives need practice with feedback. Judgment objectives need varied cases and discussion of reasoning. Attitude objectives are shaped more by what colleagues and managers do than by any session. The commonest mismatch is a knowledge method used for a skill.
When is simulation the right training method in healthcare?
Simulation fits skill, judgment, and teamwork objectives, especially rare events that staff might otherwise first meet in an emergency. It lets learners perform a real task, including making and recovering from errors, with no risk to a patient. Much of the learning happens in the debrief, where the reasoning behind each decision is examined, so simulation without skilled debriefers becomes an expensive knowledge session.
What is the difference between competency validation and training completion?
Competency validation is an observed demonstration that a person can do a task to standard, while training completion only records that someone attended or finished something. Completion proves exposure, not capability. Accreditors such as the Joint Commission expect competence to be assessed at orientation and at set intervals afterward, and validation matters most with a new device, a changed procedure, or a task moved to a different role.
What is transfer of training and how can managers improve it?
Transfer of training is how much of what was learned gets used at work, and it is where most training investment is lost. Design helps when practice resembles the work, varies, and is followed soon by real use. Managers have more influence: they can create an early chance to use the skill, ask about it, remove obstacles, and stop rewarding the old way of working.

About the Healthcare Organization and Management course

How many college credits is Healthcare Organization and Management?
Healthcare Organization and Management (Health 302) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 105 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
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