Miss Kristy Tomlinson1, Miss Hong Pham, Ms Kirsty Gardner-Berry, Mrs Bronwyn Bergl, Mrs Helen Klingberg
1Perth Children's Hospital, , Australia
Biography:
Kristy Tomlinson is the coordinator of WA's Newborn Hearing Screening Program. Her background in in heath service design and coordination, with extensive experience in international health program design in India, Philippines and Vietnam. She is passionate about designing sustainable health services that are accessible to and trusted by consumers.
Abstract
Effective newborn hearing screener training is essential for screening accuracy, positive consumer experience, screener confidence and the achievement of national key performance indicators (KPIs). The delivery and coverage of screener training in Western Australia (WA) to date has proven challenging with distances to travel, screening workforce characteristics, and trainer resourcing capacity to cater for staff turnover. Whilst some training and assessment components can be delivered via login access to online modules and remote classroom delivery, these don’t address the need for individual practical competency evaluations to take place for quality assurance purposes.
To address the challenge of distance when needing to perform practical competency evaluations, a pilot project was initiated to investigate whether this component of screener training could be performed remotely. Planning for remote delivery included hardware and connectivity requirements, remote test room set up, personnel required in both locations, and adaptation of the competency evaluation to optimise the remote assessment process. A mock test run was performed using a room-to-room setup within the same hospital location. Two experienced and two new screeners took part in the mock competency evaluation. Feedback was sought from trainees and assessors with regard to the physical set up required, experience of being assessed remotely, and experience of trying to assess a staff member from a separate location. Results from the feedback obtained will be discussed together with the planned modifications to address these before initiating the pilot at one of our hospitals.