Britta Elena Ricken
University of Paderborn, Germany
Title: Learning in the workplace – building a model of the learning environment in health care
Biography
Biography: Britta Elena Ricken
Abstract
In times of demographic, medical, financial and organizational changes, nurses are faced with high skill and physical requirements. Furthermore, the access to trainings is often constrained by staff shortages (Eraut et al., 2003). A beneficial learning environment became indispensable for health care organizations.
A learning culture, as a part of the organizational culture, can create a framework for beneficial learning conditions (Tracey et al., 1995). A learning culture is expressed by different norms, values and attitudes. When looking on the strategic level, it becomes manifest in organizational conditions supporting learning through different management systems (Sonntag et al., 2004).
The work of Hilkenmeier and Schaper (2015) shows multiple factors of a beneficial learning culture like encouraged proactivity and supervisor support. They developed a Learning Culture Inventory (LCI) as a measure of an organization's learning culture that could also predict the participation and performance in formal and informal learning activities. Other factor´s determining the learning environment are the different structural factors of a hospital like the structure or the strategy. Körner, Fröhlich, Wirtz and Göritz (2015) determined fifteen influencing items of an organizational learning environment and developed the Clinical-Culture-Questionnaire.
A paper-based survey was conducted with registered nurses (N = 307), working in catholic hospitals in Germany. As a confirmatory data technique, CFA was applied for scale development. Structural equation modeling was applied to build and evaluate a causal model representing a clinical learning environment. The findings show that the developed inventory shows acceptable psychometric properties and a stable structure.