Practical Tips for Successful Implementation of Educational Innovations: Project Management Tools for Health Professional Educators.

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Growing demands from health professional educators lead to expectations for smooth implementation of high-stake endeavors such as developing and successfully launching educational innovations ranging from curricular sessions to new programs under time constraints. Usually, multiple requirements, resources, and processes need to be identified, evaluated, and effectively utilized, making the process difficult and confusing. Personnel and operations must be aligned to create momentum for a successful workflow, which requires planning and negotiation with stakeholders. Increasingly, project management strategies and skills have been recommended to medical educators for accomplishing these goals; however, to-date no practical tools or templates have been provided to support and guide educational implementation processes in a practical fashion. Aim: Adjusted to the needs of medical educators across all healthcare professions, we provide interactive templates and tools in the appendix, which walk readers through the implementation of a complete educational project from start to finish. Methods: Using project management guidelines established by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the global credentialing body for the project management profession, the tools and templates follow best practices that were aligned with standards of curriculum development (six-step approach) as published by Kern and colleagues ( Thomas, Kern, Hughes & Chen (Eds.), 2016). Results: We identified a practical workflow for implementing educational innovations and developed interactive tools and templates as guides for tracking and presenting progress for the launch of educational projects of any scale, large or small. Conclusions/summary statement: Developing and implementing complex, multistep endeavors such as collaborative educational sessions or programs can be mastered successfully using project management tools and templates. Based on international project management guidelines and best practices, the authors outline how project management tools and templates allow medical educators to streamline successful systematic planning, engage in creative-problem solving and establish consensus under time constraints.