Challenging Expectations: Skill Analysis & Development

Presentation Description / Summary: How do we know this veterinary technician has the skills they say they do? How can I tell who on my team has what skills? What do I do if they don’t? Skill analysis has long been on the fly in veterinary medicine and is often not actually performed. New hires are quickly shown what is expected of them and left to figure it out or constantly ask questions of their new teammates. We must do skill analysis to set them up for success and assist with assimilation into the team and environment. This does not only apply to new hires. How often do you hear that a particular technician cannot train because they don’t do something the right way? Creating the structure takes time and effort, but don’t let that be the reason not to start. There are ten steps to building a program that goes beyond training and dives into the individual competencies: define the skill, identify the steps and components, gather resources, observe or review performance, evaluate competency, provide feedback, develop an improvement plan, implement practice and training, reassess competency, and record keeping. In this lecture, we will dive into each of those and come out able to build up the skills and confidence of our teams.