Welcome to Module 1, Session 1 of the Cardiovascular Program Coordinator Course. This module is Building Teams and content is provided by Bridget Gilley and Christine Keenan. In the Cardiovascular Program Coordinator Course, the overarching learning objectives that will be covered across all modules are identify your own leadership and communication styles to build and coach the team through successful accreditation, apply project management skills to the accreditation process, analyze data reports to appropriately identify process improvement opportunities, and recognize cost savings or revenue generated as a result of accreditation efforts. During this session, coordinators will learn foundational skills needed as you journey through the accreditation process and strengthen your program. Learning objectives and agenda for this session will focus on the first topic, assess the necessary skill sets for the accreditation team and committee members, and then the next session will cover the remaining topics of identify and build a dynamic team, and then plan and conduct a successful meeting. You will begin by reviewing the definition of team. As a noun, it is a number of persons associated for doing anything conjointly. If we look at the verb, it is to join in a cooperative activity. But if we look at the total definition, a team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to information, resources, and skills, who seek to combine their efforts to achieve a common goal. So basically, a team is people with different backgrounds, different skill sets, different ideas, and different values that all come together to achieve a set goal, and in this case, accreditation. So what skills do you need on your team? Let's look closely at these. First, the coordinator will most often serve as the leader and will need to create and communicate the vision. What does that mean exactly? The coordinator develops the goal, the purpose, and the mission for the team. The coordinator will motivate and inspire pushing them towards the goal. The coordinator demonstrates the ability to delegate and communicate effectively. Please remember, accreditation is not an I project, but a team project, so you will need the ability to delegate responsibilities to other team members. You will also need the ability to communicate effectively. You're most likely going to be the leader of the committee meetings, and communication with team members and senior leadership as to the status of the accreditation process is critical, so you'll need to be able to communicate this effectively. Also, you generate an environment of infectious passion, your passion for the accreditation, your passion towards process improvement, and patient outcomes. You will spread this not only within your team, but within the entire facility. Lastly, the coordinator displays the ability to help people achieve things they do not think are possible. Think back when you first opened the accreditation tool. You were likely overwhelmed as you looked at all the mandatory components. The coordinator needs to harness that emotion, flip it around, and motivate the team to accomplish what they may not think is possible. In addition to the previous skills, a coordinator needs basic skills and experience and knowledge in using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You will be using Word to develop documents, revise order sets, policies and procedures, as agreed upon your committee, so you need a working knowledge of these software applications. When uploading documents to the tool, documents must be submitted in a PDF format, so you will need to know how to convert these documents to a PDF. For Excel, you will be using this to track data, or if you receive data from a registry, you will be looking at those through Excel spreadsheets likely. Also you will need to understand how to utilize Excel to run graphs and display the data to the frontline staff. PowerPoint is also an essential application that will be utilized for developing meeting presentations and educational offerings for internal and external communities. PowerPoint is a great way to provide this education. Now flowcharts, this knowledge is also essential. Flowcharts are basically a map to demonstrate the flow of the patient or process. The coordinator needs to understand how to develop, revise, and publish. If you have not had any experience working with flowcharts in the past, please reach out to your quality department for education and gain an understanding of what software is available for flowcharting processes. In addition, there are multiple online flowcharting and Microsoft application educational offerings free of charge. The next item under leadership skills is involvement in process improvement initiatives. And again, if you are not familiar with process improvement, get with your quality department and see what method your facility has adopted to utilize for process improvement. You will likely use the same method for these PI initiatives during the accreditation process. The last item here is the collection and or reporting of data. So in some facilities, some coordinators are responsible for data collection, where others may use a third-party vendor to abstract and enter the data. In this scenario, the coordinator is still responsible for ensuring data accuracy and reporting out of the data to those team members and frontline staff. If your facility utilizes a third-party vendor, you will still need the basic knowledge of the data abstracted and the data definitions in order to interpret the data appropriately. Another leadership skill is experience in participating in team projects. You need to have been a part of a team previously, and if not, go back to your quality department and or your leadership to identify how they develop teams for projects. Lastly, for a coordinator to be successful, this role needs to be a dedicated position or have dedicated time allocated to work on the accreditation process. To complete all of the accreditation requirements, 12 months is allowed. During this time, you will need to schedule dedicated time to work on coordinating the team, collecting documents, abstracting and analyzing data, leading PI initiatives, meeting with your assigned accreditation review specialist, etc. Many facilities have dedicated FTE to fulfill this coordinator role, but many others do not. It is up to the facility to define the time allocated for this role. How do we get the right people on our team? Let's look at the core of who you need to have on the committee. First and foremost, senior leadership. As support has to come from the top down, senior leadership will be critical as you develop or revise protocols, policies, flow charts, or order sets. This person will also know the time-sensitive requirements to ensure accreditation goals are accomplished. Medical staff, engagement related to the topics, whether this is going to be your chest pain, cath lab, heart failure, electrophysiology, transcatheter valve, or other type of committee. If pursuing multiple accreditation or certifications, it is recommended to combine these committees if the stakeholders are the same. This will avoid meeting fatigue and promote optimal engagement. Quality or process improvement management is extremely important to include in committee membership as your facility will be expected to identify process improvement initiatives. Establishing these relationships will foster collaboration and ensure the facility approved method of PI is utilized. Education staff. This is critical as staff education is a mandatory component of accreditation and certification. The coordinator will collaborate with the education department to develop and roll out necessary educational offerings to staff and providers. Your frontline staff. These are very important people to include. If they are not involved with process reviews, decision-making, it's going to be very challenging to get their buy-in. The frontline staff live the processes daily. They have valuable feedback on what is working and where workarounds are being performed. And of course, your department managers. They will be the champions for protocol changes and process improvements impacting their units. They are certainly critical members of your team. Now we will pivot to some of the team leader responsibilities. You need to be able to prepare an agenda. You can consult with team members to determine the agenda. A good practice before a meeting is to send out a message to all the team members and ask if they have any topic recommendations for the agenda. You will take this information in consideration when developing this agenda. And then after it is set, send it out in advance so the members have an opportunity to review and come prepared for the meeting. This will also prevent unwanted or unneeded items brought to the meeting. The members will know in advance that these are the items that we will be discussing. You will also want to establish specific time parameters. What time will your meeting start? What time will your meeting end? Make sure you start and stop on time. If you get to the end of your time and any leftover discussion points or agenda items are left, these will be needed for tabling until the next meeting. Occasionally, you will find a topic or an item that may be handled through a group email or even an ad hoc meeting if there is just too much time until the next meeting and you do not want to lose momentum in your progress. So, evaluate the discussion items to see how best to handle. Another team leader responsibility is to maintain a focused discussion. Occasionally, a topic gets interjected into a discussion and it may take the conversation in a different direction. The coordinator needs to have the ability to refocus the group and stick to the agenda items. Always have someone delegated as a recorder as this person will keep a list of items discussed as well as any off-topic items that need to go into a parking lot. The parking lot approach is a method to record important items a team member wants to discuss but time did not permit during the meeting. You can track the list of the parking lot items on a piece of paper, use a whiteboard, sticky notes on a display board, or other method. This is an effective way to communicate you heard the team member, recognize the importance of the topic, and they can see a notation was made to discuss this at a later time. The leader also needs to be able to encourage and support participation by all members. During your meeting, if you see a member sitting back in silence or not taking part in the discussion, ask them if they have any thoughts on the topic. You want to create an environment and safe space where all opinions are encouraged and valued. You also want to maintain an appropriate level of control. Now this goes hand-in-hand with discouraging a clash of ideas. Teams need diversity and different perspectives, but if conversations get out of control or become inappropriate, you want to make sure that you bring the committee back to target discussions. Then you may say, hey, let's pick the top three issues and then decide which one is the most important to the group, again taking it from being one individual and making it a collaborative discussion. Another responsibility is to exhibit effective listening skills. As people share their ideas, listen closely. Let them completely finish their thought or idea before responding. This will ensure you completely understand what they are sharing and it also communicates value. It is a good practice to summarize the key points at the end of your meeting. Review the topics of discussion, any action items, who is responsible, and the due date. For example, assume Jill is a member of our team and she has been assigned to work with appropriate frontline staff on flowcharting the admission to discharge of a heart failure patient. Use state Jill's assignment and the due date to communicate the task and specific time parameters. It is the responsibility of the coordinator or leader to establish expectations and deadlines to ensure goals are accomplished. And then always remember to end the meeting with the date of the next meeting so members can make sure it is on their calendars. Now we have talked a lot about leader responsibilities and who are the key members for committees. Let's take a minute for a quick case study. We're going to be using Amanda throughout all the case studies in this module. Amanda is a part-time nurse on the float pool who has been given the responsibility to achieve the chest pain center and heart failure accreditations for her hospital. What are some skills she'll need for this task? Can she do it on her own? Think about this for a minute. Remember all that we've discussed thus far. What are the skills she will need? The first thing that comes to mind is will she have time to do just not just one accreditation but two? She is a bedside nurse. Does she have any experience leading or being a part of a team project? Does she have excellent communication skills? Does she have a working knowledge of various software? Is she familiar with using Excel to make graphs? Does she know how to make flow charts or convert documents to a PDF? Has she ever dealt with policies and procedures and the process to get these updated and approved? Is she familiar with the facility's method of process improvement? Has she worked with senior leadership before? Is she comfortable with delegating to other team members? Will she have dedicated time for this? Now she's a part-time nurse so this is not a full-time position. She will need this dedicated time to work on accreditations. Or is she expected to balance staffing assignments along with the accreditations? These are all things that we think about when we look at Amanda and the tasks she's been given. This concludes Module 1, Session 1 of the Cardiovascular Program Coordinator course.

building teams

accreditation process

leadership and communication styles

project management skills

teamwork