The healthcare industry is coming under close scrutiny to reduce costs, provide better outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction. Soft skills are an important component because of the communications skills necessary to achieve high levels of quality patient care and safety. Interpersonal skills include communications between and among healthcare workers, between healthcare workers and patients, and between healthcare workers and patient families. These could be questions that elicit important patient care information, lead to responses that enable better diagnoses, or discussions about drug and health care compliance.

Miscommunicated information in the healthcare industry can lead to disastrous results. Medical information that is not communicated at all can similarly put lives at risk. Recognizing this, an international non-profit health organization engaged ATG to create simulation-based training to teach their practitioners to provide important life-saving information to patients in a clear, supportive, and persuasive way.

There are almost 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. and all of them, whether they are for-profit (comprising about 10%) or not-for-profit (comprising about 90%), will strongly assert that their primary focus is quality patient care and this is especially true among the community hospitals. However, hospitals operate at very low financial margins which means it is not always feasible or practical to provide the type of soft skills training necessary to produce positive behavioral change in their workers when done in the traditional way or classroom and role-playing.

This behavioral change applies to all levels of employees in healthcare settings, and extends beyond the direct contact that they have with patients and their families. Staff interactions with each other, as well as the attitudes with which they approach their jobs, are equally important. ATG, in fact, is currently developing a series of simulations to teach low-level employees of a major midwest hospital system to follow rules, demonstrate professionalism, and relate to supervisors, co-workers, patients, and visitors in an appropriate and effective way.

ATG provides a technology solution that supports scalability, quality control and staff productivity. Simulations specific to hospital and other healthcare environments address issues of compliance, safety, and communication — all critical to providing higher quality patient care and reducing risk of liability.

Contact us today for more information about our e-learningand classroom curricula.

Access Technologies Group
P.O. Box 1558
New Canaan, CT 06840

Phone: (203) 966-8572

It is ATG's belief that training can be more engaging, impactful, relevant, and cost-effective by combining the best of e-learning and instructor-led training (ILT).