Birthdays and Compliance Have a Lot in Common

Spending 20+ years as a compliance officer means that I’m often thinking about compliance — even at birthday parties. And that’s when I realized birthdays and compliance have a lot in common.

You can’t go beyond a year (+ a day for leap year) without having a birthday or completing your Bloodborne Pathogen (BBP) training if your job tasks include duties that can be anticipated to have the potential for exposure to BBP and other potentially infectious materials (OPIM). 

It’s fine if people know your birthday, as long as they don’t ask your age, right? It’s kinda like PHI — it’s fine to talk about your birthday as long as it isn’t combined with health-related information.

The birthday party RSVP is another example. The host wants to be sure there’s enough cake, and in a healthcare organization the compliance officer wants to be sure everyone was offered a Hepatitis B vaccination to protect them from occupational exposure to infectious diseases.

Learning Is a Gift

I would love for all employees to think of training as a birthday present. 

There are the gifts that you know you’re getting and may be dreading, such as personal items from your parents or annual compliance training.  Although we can’t solve the parent issues, we do make compliance training as interesting and informative as possible.

There are gifts you need, like new shoes or tires for your car because they are needed to move forward.  With learning and compliance, this type of gift may be continuing education that staff needs to renew their professional licenses.

Then, there are surprise gifts. The ones everyone wants. These are the extra trainings that employees can take because they’re interested, they want to improve their skills, or they want a promotion.

Use infection control as an example. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology notes that, “Recent years have seen outbreaks of previously unknown diseases; rapid spread of known diseases beyond geographic areas where they typically exist and the persistence of infectious diseases that cannot be controlled.”

Learning management systems (LMS), such as MedTrainer, are loaded with courses to help improve staff’s understanding of infection control and prevention techniques, chronic illness prevention, emerging diseases management, and identifying and preventing antibiotic resistance.   

Simplify compliance training with MedTrainer Learning

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Unwrap Learning for Everyone

Now more than ever, managers and staff have to digest a lot of information to stay current on healthcare topics, such as chronic illnesses and evidence-based guidelines in a world that is full of innovations and learning opportunities.

Staff may not tell you their birthday or age, but they can show you what they want to learn about by enabling self-assign training. They can choose healthcare topics that are important to them, their role, and the patient populations they serve. As staff learn more about high-priority public health issues and evidence-based interventions, they can incorporate learning into how they comply. 

Not all learning management systems offer this feature. It’s one of the many things that sets MedTrainer apart. Check out MedTrainer’s course library of nearly 1,000 titles, including 400 that align with continuing education credit for license renewal.