As a result, laboratory teams face practical challenges everyday such as the growing need to keep up to date with technological developments and acquiring the knowledge to get the most from instrumentation. These issues highlight the need for the development of long-term partnerships between suppliers and customers. It also puts emphasis on finding a way of taking training away from the hospital-based laboratory environment, where the pressure to turn around increasing volumes of work rapidly can sometimes make on-site training distracting, if not impossible.
To address these challenges, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics recently opened its new Siemens Academy Training and Education Centre at the company’s headquarters in Frimley, Surrey. With this centre now open, Siemens can truly provide UK customers with a wide range of training options, offering a multitude of schedules, programmes, opportunities and topics for education.
Training beyond instrumentation.
As workload and efficiency pressures lead to increased demand for the automation of traditional routine laboratory functions, there is a requirement for different skills to be learned during progress up the professional career ladder. Topics such as Lean process improvement, Six Sigma and other workflow management tools have become an important part of the education of laboratory professionals.
It is also an essential requirement to keep up to date with new developments in the clinical arena as well as the need to broaden experience across the traditional discipline boundaries. For this reason, Siemens is developing an extensive clinical education programme based on ‘disease state management’. The clinical agenda will focus on areas such as immunology, cardiac disease, virology, infectious disease, diabetes and liver disease. This will provide continuing professional development (CPD)-accredited training to help customers maintain knowledge and understanding of new developments.
Extending knowledge, improving efficiency
The new training facility comprises seven fully equipped training suites that can train up to 42 people at a time. Comprehensive instrument training courses are aimed at biomedical scientists and medical laboratory assistants who have day-to-day contact with analyser systems. Suites can be transformed into lecture rooms and there is a dedicated room for information technology (IT) training.
Giovanni Nicolaci, training manager for the Siemens Academy Training and Education Centre, states: “Our goal is to ensure that when customers leave the training, clinical or other educational course, they reflect back and know that they had an excellent experience, as well as feeling confident and competent in being able to implement what they have learned. The investment we have made sets a new benchmark for what NHS laboratories should expect from a supplier partnership.”
Preparing for the unexpected
Giovanni continues: “By providing wide-ranging training across a variety of instrumentation and pathology disciplines, the centre can offer a viable refresher for instrument users who previously received peer-to-peer training in the laboratory setting, or had formal training years ago. Support will also benefit laboratory personnel who have the necessary knowledge to run systems on a day-to-day basis, but who may not be fully prepared for exceptional or infrequent procedures.”
Advanced troubleshooting training will also be available. This is a key element in long- term effective laboratory management, and the facilities at the Siemens Academy provide the advantage of being able to learn in an environment that feels like an operational clinical setting yet eliminates the need to disable laboratory systems in an active environment. For example, scenario planning on system recovery will not interfere with any active sample processing and therefore keeps laboratories fully operational.
New directions in training
Andy Barnett, manager of the Technical Solutions Centre at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, states: “Besides bringing best practice to existing training programmes, the Siemens Academy Training and Education Centre will also allow the company to extend training capability to automation tracking systems, of which Siemens is the global market leader. Previously, training was in the laboratory after the implementation process. In the past we used an approach called ‘by-exception training’, showing users how to manage issues as they occurred in real-time in the clinical setting. Now, we can be more proactive and take a workflow management approach to automation system training.”
ADVIA automation systems provide a combination of high-performance tracking and analytical platforms to increase productivity, improve quality and provide predictable turnaround times. Siemens automation solutions are customised to provide effective automation within spatial, financial and staffing constraints, which are all particularly significant following Lord Carter’s review of NHS pathology services in England. This advocates consolidation of some pathology services into centralised high-throughput environments.
Blood sciences best practice
The change management processes involved in implementing large solutions-based systems involving multiple disciplines is vital to the success of the blood sciences laboratory. The ADVIA LabCell is the only blood sciences track on the market today, providing the laboratory with the ability to eliminate the duplication of sample management systems and processes required for separate haematology and biochemistry tracks. Offering automation training in a controlled and stress-free environment helps pathology department staff manage the change process, and gives users insight into what to expect when systems are up and running. This helps to reshape additional process design.
As many ADVIA LabCell installations are working strategically to develop a more multidisciplinary workforce, additional support and training is important to achieve desired outcomes. The newly installed automation suite adds an additional dimension to automation training. Siemens now provides extensive training in its dedicated facility, as well as on-site training, which enables system operators to manage and run ADVIA automation systems effectively.
Driving improvements
Recently, there has been a shift in laboratory focus from simply looking at what products suppliers can provide at hospital sites towards concentration on added-value, educational and support services that suppliers have developed. With this in mind, Siemens’ facility also offers comprehensive training to Siemens’ support staff so that customers can continue to rely on effective support after their training has finished and they have returned to their laboratories.
Giovanni adds: “As laboratories continue to consolidate and rely on a single-source supplier, it is important that we are able not only to train system users, but also ensure that we have highly trained support teams located close to our customers.”
Supporting the next generation
The opening of the Siemens Academy Training and Education Centre coincided with last year’s National Pathology Week activities. Once again, Siemens was the sole sponsor of this important initiative and has been working closely with The Royal College of Pathologists to support its aims and objectives in informing a wider audience about the critical role that pathology plays in healthcare.
Adrian Ralph, general manager, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, states: We opened the doors to local schoolchildren to learn more about the world of clinical chemistry, haematology and microbiology, as well as seeing the latest automated laboratory technology in action. The aim was to educate and inspire the next generation of biomedical scientists and pathologists.”
Paving the way forward
The evolving need for customers to obtain the most from pathology systems and instrumentation, while at the same time meeting targets and facing the emerging threats of NHS budget and funding cuts, has put more pressure than ever on suppliers to ensure they can provide the best possible support and quality of service.
The Siemens Academy training centre and courses move away from the daily product conversations that laboratory staff have with company representatives, to focus on providing unbiased tools and opportunities to increase knowledge and skills. This in turn will help with the clinical interpretation of results, support continued scientific development and facilitate strategic partnerships for the future.
www.siemens.co.uk/diagnostics