Providing more people with consistent training across two health regions has won a local Interior Health employee an award from the Health Employers Association of B.C.
An ergonomic specialist based at Shuswap Lake General Hospital, Lisa Wherry received an Award of Merit in the Workplace Health Innovation Category for her work in promoting e-learning to provide education and training for injury prevention initiatives.
Wherry and the other five members of IH’s Workplace Health and Safety Integrated Services form a department that provides health and safety training across Interior Health and Northern Health.
“We’re a small department trying to make a big impact on health and safety and we can now reach a much bigger audience,” says Wherry of the program that was launched about a year ago. “It takes the barriers of geography away.”
Wherry says in the past, “good numbers” might have been training provided to about 100 employees a year.
Available on a 24-7 basis, a self-directed training module on new equipment has been viewed by more than 1,700 people since it was posted late last fall.
“In six large IH acute care sites, we provided face-to-face training to nurse resource people, who then use the content and e-learning to supply training at site level. It’s a blended approach,” says Wherry.