OIG Guidance

The educational program should be designed to spark interest and conversation among the attendees so that it is adaptable to different educational styles. The OIG Guidance states: “A variety of teaching methods, such as interactive training, and training in several different languages, particularly where a hospital has a culturally diverse staff, should be implemented so that all affected employees are knowledgeable of the institution’s standards of conduct and procedures for alerting senior management to problems and concerns.”

Emotional Content

Ideas presented in this course related to color, font, blank space, language, architectural space, and an interactive component can be applied to educational materials to make the content more interesting, fun, and engaging.

One way to engage the audience in education is to make the experience emotional for the audience in applying compliance to hypothetical scenarios that have tragic or heroic consequences. In these cases, discussing the compliance aspects of a topic that evokes a strong emotional response often becomes a thoughtful debate that the participants are more likely to remember. Another example is using news stories about the peers of audience members, as this creates an emotional connection in that the audience can see themselves suffering the consequences of peer noncompliance.

Audience Engagement

Education can also be designed around games and trivia where the audience can form teams and feel proud or even surprised when they know the answers. Short quizzes at the end of each educational session also help those who may feel that they could not master laws or regulations realize that they know a great deal, improving their confidence at work. The educational program can also give confidence to the audience to bring their questions and concerns directly to compliance professionals to create an open environment where members of the audience can spontaneously ask questions outside of educational sessions. The educational program should place additional emphasis on weak areas based on metrics provided by auditing and monitoring findings, as well as on risk assessments.