By Rebecca Koppel, Program Manager for Field Building and Resources

Are you developing complex care education for students? Or a training program for care team members? We can help!

Delivering coordinated, person-centered care to people with complex needs requires specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes. The introduction of the Core competencies for frontline complex care providers in October 2020 by the Camden Coalition’s National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs (National Center) was a major step forward in defining the practice of complex care. These core competencies outline the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes for all care team members involved in delivering complex care. As complex care is delivered by a wide range of practitioners in diverse settings and locations using a variety of care models, the core competencies are intended to provide a common baseline, framework, and language for the delivery of quality care.

Over the past year, we received feedback that just creating core competencies was not enough — complex care managers and educators wanted tangible and practical resources and guidance in using the competencies. In response, we developed Implementing the complex care core competencies: A toolkit to guide education and training to help educators and managers teach and train complex care.

This toolkit, informed by leading complex care education and practice organizations, includes guidance on the design and implementation of effective training and education programs, curated and comprehensive resources designed around the competencies, and case studies and discussion questions. Designed as modules, the toolkit helps educators and trainers identify competencies or domains of competencies for which they need support and integrate the resources, case studies, and discussion questions into their education, training, or competency assessment programs.

Development of the toolkit

The toolkit was developed by an Education and Training Development Collaborative, composed of care managers, team members, and educators from institutions leading and pioneering the complex care field. The Collaborative included the four Student Hotspotting hubs, Hill Country Community Clinic, and the population health team at the Camden Coalition.

The Student Hotspotting hubs administer the Interprofessional Student Hotspotting Learning Collaborative, an annual program that trains interdisciplinary teams of professional students from schools around the country to work with individuals with complex medical and social needs using a patient-centered approach. The four Hotspotting Hubs — Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA; Southern Illinois University in Springfield, IL; University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT; and Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, CA — serve as centers of training and mentorship for schools in their regions.

Gladys Antelo-Allen brought several perspectives to participate in the Education and Training Development Collaborative. Gladys previously worked as a nurse on the Camden Coalition’s population health team and now works to develop and support our Student Hotspotting sites. When reflecting on the toolkit development process, she said, “It was great being in a space with such a diverse group. We were able to pull from the experiences of not only experts in the field of practice, but those who have been working diligently for a long time to train the next generation of nurses, doctors, social workers, and other care team members. Both perspectives were so important to consider in the development of this toolkit, since the toolkit addresses both the present and the future.”

This toolkit is a “total game changer”

There is growing excitement in the field for this toolkit. For too long, complex care managers and educators have worked independently to create the same materials. The National Center has brought complex leaders together to discuss complex care education and training before, but this is the first published complex care-specific training and education toolkit.

Meghan Golden, a leader at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine Student Hotspotting Hub and member of the Education and Training Development Collaborative, said, “This toolkit takes the abstract idea of learning competencies and makes them relevant in the day to day world of healthcare. General ideals and goals are linked with specific skill building tasks that easily translate into aspects of new employee orientations, internships, electives, practicums, and other learning experiences. Each competency is accompanied by several trainings, PowerPoint slide decks, and other resources that provide helpful background and teaching points. This toolkit will be a total game changer for professionals wanting to level up the way they teach and train!”

More information

The complex care core competencies provided a unifying framework for the field of complex care. Now, this toolkit will provide support to managers and educators to create more specialized and robust training programs for complex care team members. We hope you find it helpful in your training and education work, and that you share it with your colleagues. If you are interested in further support to create or build a complex care education or training program, including identifying gaps, generating buy-in, supporting customization, and building curriculum, get in touch with us by filling out this form.

Explore the core competencies toolkit