A quality approach for conducting training needs assessments in the Ministry of Health, State of Bahrain

In health care organizations around the world, Training Needs Assessments (TNAs) have generally followed a professions-based approach. For example, the training needs of doctors, nurses, each allied health profession, and distinct support staff have been analyzed separately--individualized TNAs conducted for each speciality and functional area. Although a professions-based TNA model can provide useful information to human resource development (HRD) professionals, there are two major drawbacks: (1) it is possible that important training needs might be overlooked because of lack of information sharing among professions and (2) such an approach does not encourage an interdisciplinary, team orientation to service provision. This paper proposes an improved method of conceptualizing TNAs, using an approach that builds on the quality management literature (TQM, CQI, etc.) which stresses the importance of customer- and service-orientations to organizing and measuring organizational and individual performance.