The role of medical education unit in staff development: An experience from AIIMS, New Delhi.

ABSTRACT

Context and Setting: Attainment of health objectives depends on the capacity building of all categories of staff. While Medical Education has some provision for faculty development, the existing initiatives for staff development are too few and floating. We describe our experience in conducting a pilot training program for the administrative staff at AIIMS. Need for innovation The competency and motivation of the administrative staff are crucial for better public dealing, and for organization’s effectiveness. In the existing system, there was no such mechanism to drive these. Description of innovation We selected Assistants and Office Supervisors (71) for the training program. Based on brain storming meetings with administrators and keeping in view the time constraints, we identified four modules - Team building, Effective Communication, Stress management and Use of computers (Application of MS Office).Each module was of three hours duration conducted by medical faculty, educationists and management experts. All sessions were highly interactive including case scenarios, exercises, games, role play and psychometric tools. We obtained feedback from the participants to evaluate the effectiveness. Lessons learnt An overwhelming majority (>90% participants) perceived the content and the training process as “Highly Useful” (strongest rating). The trainees found ‘Computer Application’ highly useful, because of its utility potential. ‘Communication skills’, ‘Team work’ and ‘Stress management’ were also perceived as useful for their professional and personal lives. Effective collaboration of medical faculty, educationists and management experts led to the success of this program. We recommend that such model should be a regular feature and be linked with performance appraisal.