Approach to HIPAA privacy, security, and healthcare compliance training

This past week I’d reconnected with an old friend from my hometown, and we inevitably reached the point in the conversation where we began discussing our current and past employers. My friend mentioned something interesting that I thought might be a great topic to share here. When he was talking about a couple of jobs, he had mentioned how he had spent “… so much time in training covering stuff that just had nothing to do with my role, I sort of disconnected…”

Being in the online training business, offering OSHA and HIPAA privacy and security services, I tried my hardest to refrain from launching into a counterpoint of how the training is all required and thus pertinent to the role at hand, but I restrained myself and continued to absorb his points.

This large (not to be named in this blog) corporation had a nebulous internal training structure that provided a “one-size-fits-all” approach to HIPAA privacy, security, and healthcare compliance training in general. While they certainly had all their bases covered, they were certainly stretching their new-hires thin with a lot of extra content that didn’t sound particularly engaging to say the least.

In the end he said that he sat in a small room for eight hours a day the first week staring at a green and black flickering screen. If I’m not mistaken this is one of the seven levels of hell mentioned in Dante’s Inferno.

A way to keep the training content relevant, engaging and empowering

I think that sometimes as providers of training material (whether online or in-person), we focus too much on providing everything imaginable in a constrained period that we lose track of the person who is there attempting to absorb all the content.

If we can recognize that “humanity” and find a way to keep the content relevant, engaging and empowering, we will be doing a greater service for people in our organizations that will ultimately extend to those we serve.