Tick box training

Tick box training

Tick box training is about completing assignments, ticking the box and then being considered trained.

It has benefits and disadvantages

Tick box training means you know what you are meant to be learning - at it best it lays out in plain English exactly what you are meant to be able to do, to know or to understand. Then when you have convinced another human being that this is the case, they tick your box.

You wander around, or even march in the direction you need to go to get all your boxes ticked. It is a bit like a treasure hunt. Go to the crossroads by the pub, where you can see a white horse and under a sign hidden by a tree, you will find the next clue. Once you have collected twenty clues, or ticked twenty boxes you will be a fully trained gherkin.

Tick box training is great - it gives everyone something to work towards, its fair, its politically correct, and there is no time limit. No bonuses for getting all your boxes ticked in the first six months of a seven year training and no penalties for staying on for a decade. For the game player, timing their ticking means that they can be in position for the best job. Waiting to throw their final double six just at the very moment the big prize goes past on the conveyor belt of job opportunity and employment.

The benefit of tick box training is that once you have ticked a particular box of competencies, you never need to think about it again. You have done it, you have got your tick, you are competent, your brain can move onto better things. In the meantime you can hope fervently you will never need that training at a time you don't have a) a scapegoat b) senior colleague present or c) someone who actually knows what they doing in that competency to keep you out of the doodoo and stop your name being dragged through the streets of incompetence.

Where does it stand legally? One or two poor doctors got dragged through the mud for giving Ledward, fastest gynaecologist in the West a reference. Maybe, this is a way of finding a scapegoat. X does Y, badly because they are incompetent even though they have five competency ticks. Why did X cock up? because X is an incompetent but managed to make four people feel sufficiently involved with him or her that they ticked his box. The fifth person felt guilty, and that they should not hold X back just because X was having a bad day. The other four had felt the same but were unable to tell X that.

Outstanding people stand out, choosing the middle ranks is difficult. The difference between excellent and good is not difficult, the difference between good and satisfactory is harder. SHould satisfactory people be allowed to succeed, in a high risk specialty?? probably not! But is it politically correct to discriminate against someone who with a bit of extra training might be able to do a perfectly adequate job?




Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller

http://www.drlizmiller.co.uk