OASIS Alert

If you're running out of ideas for new ways to keep staff interested in improving OASIS assessment skills, try these ideas from OASIS trainer Patricia Jump, with Acorn's End Training & Consulting.

1. Provide clinicians with weekly "OASIS Tips" forms with three or four informational facts. Concentrate on problem areas and have staff retain these forms for future reference.

2. Place an "OASIS Bulletin" in strategic places staff members use when they come to the office -- such as the bathroom and break room. Change the bulletin weekly.

3. Post an "OASIS Reminder" as a byline on every paycheck.

4. Encourage staff to submit "OASIS Real-Life Scenarios" from which they learned some technique or strategy in OASIS assessment. Publish the learning opportunities for all clinical staff and provide a small reward for each published scenario.

5. Play "OASIS Jeopardy" in which you provide the answers, while clinicians submit the questions. Set a deadline and then award a prize to all clinicians who turned in questions. Provide an additional prize for those whose responses were all correct.

6. Create independent study OASIS learning opportunities that will meet the clinicians' requirement for professional education credits.

7. Have "OASIS Tidbits" as a standing agenda item for staff meetings.

8. Provide 15-minute "mini-training" sessions at convenient times such as lunchtime or at regular staff meetings.

9. Periodically have a nurse and a physical therapist jointly complete an OASIS assessment on a patient (without consulting with each other). Compare the assessments. Use the answer variance as a teaching tool for all clinicians.

10. Regularly publish brief OASIS articles containing a randomly selected employee number hidden within the article. Let employees know you are doing this and that an employee who reads the article and finds her number should call in for her prize.