According to a 2019 study by the National Healthcare Retention and RN Staffing Report, the hospital staff turnover rate stands at 19.1%, the highest recorded in the industry for a decade. Since 2014, the average hospital has turned over 87.8% of its workforce. When dealing with these numbers, it can often seem pointless to invest time and money in training for employees that may not be around in a year.
This defeatist attitude, however, will not help keep your facility running smoothly and may, in fact, be part of the cause for high turnover rates.
Some research has shown that about 40% of employees who do not receive necessary job training to become effective will leave their position within their first year. When employees do not feel that they are well-equipped to do their jobs, they are more likely to seek a position that they are or will be equipped for.
The solution is simple: offer employees opportunities to be trained and improve the skills they need to perform their jobs better. Then, knowing that they have all the necessary skills to perform their job excellently, employees will be confident in their positions and will be more likely to stick around, making that training twice as valuable.
Now that we know how training can help retain employees in the healthcare industry, we need to understand how training also benefits a healthcare facility.
A study by the Association for Talent Development showed that companies which offered comprehensive training programs to their employees enjoy a 24% higher profit margin than those who spent less on training. Motorola, the telecommunications company, calculated that for every dollar they spent on training, they gained 30% in productivity. Just investing a little more in training employees can result in tangible, measurable earnings for a facility. How does that work?
When staff members are well-trained, there is less room for error. This brings the cost of daily operations down, as facilities will have to spend less on backtracking and cleaning up after mistakes made by employees who were not sufficiently trained. In TEE probe reprocessing, it will also help give employees all the information they need to ensure that probes have been properly reprocessed and that they do not get contaminated before use on the next patient. In this way, training helps mitigate risk against lawsuits.
Finally, but most importantly, thorough employee training can save the lives of patients and provide them with the best quality care. When patients come to your facility, they are entrusting their health and their very lives to you and your staff. If employees are not well trained to complete their jobs, then your facility runs the risk of hurting a patient and losing their trust and the community’s trust. By simply investing a small amount, you can safeguard patients from contracting healthcare-acquired infections and from having a negative experience.
Staff training is an extremely important, but undervalued, asset for any healthcare facility. Consider investing in your employees to give them a reason to stay, give your facility a higher standard, and let patients know that their health is in good hands. CS Medical offers in-service training to all staff assigned to use our medical devices, like the TEEClean and the TD 100. If you’d like a refresher course for staff members, we also offer web-based training which not only provides instruction for the proper use of the TD 100®, but also provides compliance with The Joint Commission for competency and training.
