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Quality, reliability and safety are primary concerns in your professional world—and in ours. At SiTEL of MedStar Health, we provide a comprehensive education and training solution to those who work in healthcare. As seasoned professionals, we have many years of experience in the practice and management of medicine and healthcare, respectively. We understand how training impacts performance in hospitals.
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We created and continue to manage two of the nation’s largest simulation centers.
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Blog
11
Oct
2010
2010
Skills for America’s Future
Posted by Todd Borghesani
At a meeting of the President’s Economic Advisory Board on Monday, President Obama announced the launch of a new plan to promote better job training at community colleges. The “Skills for America’s Future” initiative aims at connecting leading private sector businesses with community colleges with a view to boosting job skills in the U.S.
Unless we address the healthcare education-to-workforce pipeline, by 2020, the U.S. will face a shortage of over 200,000 physicians and 1,000,000 nurses. Solving this shortage offers opportunities to improve diversity across healthcare professions.
Unless we cultivate a new breed of healthcare professionals, we will continue to see incremental changes in healthcare. True healthcare transformation and quality of care —achieving zero medical errors—will be driven by future generations of researchers, clinicians and administrators.
“The idea here is simple,” the president told the Advisory Board. “We want to make easier to connect students looking for jobs, with [healthcare] businesses looking to hire.”
The “Skills for America’s Future” initiative announcement comes on the eve of the first White House summit on community colleges, which will be held on Tuesday. Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, who is a community college teacher, will preside over the summit. “What I’m hoping this summit does is create awareness and highlight the value of community colleges,” Jill Biden said in an interview.
Addressing the Advisory Board on Monday Obama said, “The goal is to ensure that every state in the country has at least one strong partnership between a growing industry and a community college.” The Aspen Institute will oversee the privately funded plan.
A Presidential Memorandum released on Monday announced the establishment of an interagency Task Force on Skills for America’s Future, which will “ensure that Federal policies promote innovative training programs and curricula, including successful public-private partnerships, at community colleges as well as in other settings, that will prepare the American workforce for 21st-century jobs.”
The Task Force will be co-chaired by the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
Gap Inc., McDonald’s Corp, PG&E Corp, United Technologies Corp. and Accenture PLC are among the leading private sector corporation partners in the “Skills for America’s Future” initiative.
Related articles
Community colleges are focus of White House summit (cnn.com)
Obama convenes econ board, focusing on job skills (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Program Is to Foster Job Skills (nytimes.com)
Big-Name Companies To Help Colleges Train Workers (huffingtonpost.com)
Obama touts industry-led initiative for job training (cnn.com)
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Hollie Adejumo
Hollie Adejumo has been a high school intern at the SiTEL Clinical Simulation Center since 2010. Her principal areas of academic interest include chemistry, calculus, and global health. She is interested in providing medical services to the public and serving as a health advocate for underrepresented populations. Hollie hopes that her research will help to reduce unnecessary deaths in the future. She will pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, which will enable her to combine her interests. Proceeding to obtain an MD/PhD will give her the ability to have autonomy in the practice of medicine. This year Ms. Adejumo will be assessing the need for orthopedic simulators, and hopes to begin designing a program for an orthopedic simulator by the end of the year. Outside of school, Hollie participates in a variety of activities. Although she has been a competitive swimmer for most of her life, she also enjoys running cross country and track.
Joyce Donnellan
As the Director of Learning Management, Joyce Donnellan brings over two decades of experience in critical care nursing education and professional development to SiTEL, Medstar’s Simulation and Training Environment Laboratory. She oversees the development and operation of SiTEL’s learning management system. Ms. Donnellan specializes in the development and integration of the learning management systems in complex and decentralized environments. She has extensive experience in education and training, including the development of curricula for both live and e-learning platforms. Ms. Donnellan enjoys collaborating with program directors, educators, and other stakeholders to develop training events and effective curricula. Her research endeavors include studying the impact of online learning on organizational behavior, as well as the integration of educational games into curriculum development. Joyce has presented nationally on e-learning topics, and on innovation in emergency preparedness training. She earned her Master’s of Science in Nursing degree from George Mason University.
Pamela Leonard
Pamela Leonard brings over 15 years of experience in critical care nursing and management to her role as the Director of the SiTEL’s Clinical Simulation Centers. Pam established the first simulation center for MedStar Health and now oversees the operations of several clinical simulation centers in the greater Washington, DC and Baltimore areas. She leads the Clinical Simulation Consulting Services at SiTEL, leveraging best practices pioneered at MedStar to integrate simulation training and education programs into healthcare operations. Pam works closely with Advanced Initiatives in Medical Simulation. AIMS is a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to promoting medical simulation as a way to improve patient safety, reduce medical errors, ensure provider competency, train people to respond to public emergencies and combat situations, and reduce health care costs.
