At Amazon when we brought in new operations managers like myself the first thing we did is trained at the associate level in all positions in the area we would put them into, that lasted a week, then we sent them to the best running existing area we had for another week to show them how the best managers were running those high performing areas. Since those areas were always continuously improving, the exact best way to do something always varied a little bit between what was published and how it actually was.

I can’t tell you how much we learned from the ground level associates (nurses in your case?) and the managers while doing that. It was invaluable, and allowed me to hit the ground running when I started managing new associates. To set up a new area from scratch and learn from a phone call or email on the fly seems insane to me, especially when even small mistakes or lessons learned mean wasted PPE, nurse productivity, or worse, negative patient experience.

A round trip flight can’t cost you guys more than a couple hundred dollars and a few days time. If you learn something from the experience, share that with other hospitals do you can become an ambassador of those skills/processes.