PSYC 642 Week 5 DB Forum 3 Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Thread and Two Replies

PSYC 642 Human Resource Training and Development, Discussion Board Forum 3 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the hospital and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; Scripture, the textbook and the journal articles are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 642.

Thread

A community hospital in Tennessee trained all its medical-floor nurses in de-escalation techniques last year. Evaluation forms were glowing: 94% rated the course excellent. Yet six months later, reports of verbal and physical aggression toward staff had not changed. Nurses said the course was helpful, but few used its techniques when a patient became agitated. Several told their managers that the role plays felt nothing like a disoriented patient tugging at tubing at three in the morning, and that by the time they remembered the steps the moment had passed.

Noe (2017) separates four kinds of evaluation outcome: how trainees react, what they learn, how they behave at work and what results the organization sees. The hospital measured only reactions, the outcome least connected to performance. A course can be enjoyable and still fail to change what people do. Measuring learning with a short scenario test, behavior with observation and results with incident data would have revealed the problem months earlier, and the program design chapter suggests the gap begins with objectives that never named the behavior expected on the floor.

Blume et al. (2010) pooled 89 studies of transfer and found two clusters of predictors: what trainees bring, such as mental ability, conscientiousness and drive, and what they return to, above all encouragement from their own supervisors and coworkers. Several links were stronger for open skills, which call for judgment in each new encounter, as de-escalation does, than for closed skills executed identically every time. In the hospital, nurses returned to floors where charge nurses had not taken the course and where no one discussed the techniques again.

James 1:22 says that people who listen to God's word but never practice it are fooling themselves (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Training faces the same test: hearing is not enough. The hospital could redesign its program by training charge nurses first, adding brief refresher huddles and evaluating behavior through observation and incident reports rather than satisfaction alone.

Has anyone seen a training program that measured behavior on the job, and what did it find?

Reply to Kayla

Kayla, your suggestion that the hospital use more realistic practice is a strong one, and research suggests going further by including mistakes. Noe (2017) describes practice and feedback as central to program design, and he notes that trainees need chances to apply skills in conditions like those on the job. Keith and Frese (2008) pooled studies of error management training, in which practice deliberately leaves room for mistakes and each one is treated as information; it transferred better than error-avoidant training, especially on tasks that demand adaptation. For de-escalation, nurses could practice with actors whose responses escalate when the nurse misjudges, then debrief what went wrong. Proverbs 24:16 observes that the righteous fall seven times and rise again (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016); practice that permits falling may build the resilience nurses need when a real patient becomes threatening at two in the morning. Debriefing those errors with a charge nurse present would also build the supervisor support that the transfer research highlights.

Reply to Marcus

Marcus, I agree that the hospital should measure behavior and results, but your plan to compare incident rates before and after training needs one more piece. Noe (2017) warns that a simple pretest and posttest cannot exclude rival causes, for example a new security policy introduced at the same time. He recommends comparison groups when possible. Grossman and Salas (2011) also note that the work environment after training shapes transfer, so measuring supervisor support alongside behavior would explain why some units improve and others do not. The hospital could train two floors first and compare them with two untrained floors before rolling the program out. Luke 16:10 links faithfulness in small matters with faithfulness in large ones (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016); careful evaluation of a small pilot is faithful stewardship before the hospital invests in every unit. If the trained floors improve and the others do not, the case for expansion will be far stronger.

References

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309352880

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Grossman, R., & Salas, E. (2011). The transfer of training: What really matters. International Journal of Training and Development, 15(2), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2011.00373.x

Keith, N., & Frese, M. (2008). Effectiveness of error management training: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 59-69. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.59

Noe, R. A. (2017). Employee training and development (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.