5 Practical Tips to Make Your OSHA Training More Engaging

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has strict requirements in place for not only hospitals and large medical complexes, but also smaller healthcare and dentistry clinics. 

If you own or operate a healthcare practice, you're probably already aware of these OSHA regulations and how important it is to have them in place. If you don't follow their rules, you could be punished for each item on their checklist that isn't present. This can soon build up to a substantial sum of money.

The issue isn't with the standards themselves; rather, it's with the challenges of training people to remain compliant. Employees find OSHA training to be uninteresting, which leads to issues with comprehension and retention of information.

So, in order to minimize non-compliance and fines, how do you implement this training in a way that is attractive and engaging for employees?

1. Before you begin training, conduct a needs assessment.

Many of your experienced healthcare personnel may already be familiar with most aspects of OSHA compliance, so if you keep reissuing training that they already know, they'll lose interest. Instead of retraining staff on every aspect of OSHA compliance, conduct a needs assessment and then train staff simply on the areas where there are gaps, making training more targeted.

2. Personalize Training

Consider offering OSHA training requirements for healthcare employees in a tailored format if you want it to be more appealing and engaging. E-learning and online healthcare compliance training are simple and inexpensive solutions to tailor training to the needs of your personnel. You can also design self-paced courses so they can train in the methods that are most successful for them.

3. Use Interactive Training Content

Instead of trying to teach your healthcare office personnel the complexities and stringent standards of OSHA compliance through long manuals and reading, enroll them in online healthcare compliance training. To increase comprehension, interactive training can incorporate case studies, discussions, and role-playing. When training is interactive and immerses employees in the scenarios they are presented with, critical thinking is encouraged, which enhances retention.

4. Make it enjoyable

Although OSHA training requirements for healthcare workers are serious, it doesn't mean you can't have some fun with it. Add gamification or competition elements, for example, to encourage your medical office personnel to participate in training. When it comes to training staff on OSHA principles and rules, you may also recognize and reward high performance.

5. Keep It Short and Sweet

If you try to overwhelm your healthcare office personnel with information, nothing will stick. To maximize your outcomes and increase the possibility that individuals will not only retain material but also put it into practice regularly, keep training modules brief, succinct, and to the point.

The Training Takeaway

OSHA training is a huge challenge for employees in practically every business, not just healthcare professionals. It might be a dry, intimidating subject, but by following one or more of the guidelines above, you may maximize the return on your regulatory training investment and prevent costly fines.