The ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook (ATD Press, November 2021) addresses the many opportunities and challenges TD professionals face in the growing and rapidly changing healthcare space. Effective talent development is the thread that weaves through an entire healthcare organization to ensure it is up to standard with the latest practices in treating patients while providing a safe and engaging environment for staff. TD professionals have the unique role of tying together organizational and employee advancement in healthcare systems—and likewise, this handbook dives into areas for both business and professional evolution.

Written by 25 fellow healthcare practitioners with extensive experience in the field—from nurses, physicians, and administrators to instructional designers, chief learning officers, technology experts, and leaders across the industry, it covers six key themes across 26 chapters:

• Learning and Development Basics

• Organization Development

• Employee Development

• Business Acumen for the Health System

• Digital Transformation and Literacy

• Patient-Centric Care

Gregory Rider, director of corporate compliance at EmblemHealth, is the book’s co-editor. In this spotlight Q&A, learn more about him and his contribution to the book.

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How has your experience(s) in training and development and healthcare shaped the best practices you wanted to bring to this project?

**Collaboration has always been an important component of both my professional success and of my success with ATD volunteer work. I have found that as TD professionals, we always do better work when we collaborate with others. This is particularly important in the healthcare space, where we often are working with clinical and medical staff and other SMEs to analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate our many talent and training development initiatives. On this book, collaboration was key as I worked with my co-authors, and as all of us (the editors and ATD staff) worked with our talented, generous, and expert chapter authors.

How do you foresee the advancement of talent development in these areas within healthcare? (In an ideal world, how do you see this area flourishing for employee or organization development?)

In order for us to collaborate successfully, we need to ensure we bring our best ideas, knowledge, skills, and capabilities to all of the TD tasks we are—and will be—facing. As the work of training and talent development continues to morph into additional blended or hybrid modes of delivery and performance, each of us will be called on to further enhance our current KSAs and to develop new ones. That’s where the ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook can help us. With so many topics covering a multitude of scenarios, tips, takeaways, and best practices, any of us can dip into this “knowledge well” for whatever we need, and whenever we need it.

What is something unexpected you learned while working on this book?

While reading and reviewing Daniel Gandarilla and Candy Baptist’s chapter on “Culture of Safety and Reliability,” I learned a lot about that topic and specifically about the TeamSTEPPS and STAR models. And in Chris Reyes’ chapter on “Electronic Health Records,” I learned the subtle difference between an EMR and an EHR.

Is there something professional or personal you are proud of accomplishing in the past year?

I earned my re-certification in both talent development, with the CPTD, and in healthcare compliance, with the CHC (Certified in Healthcare Compliance).

What is a fun fact about yourself or a piece of advice you’d like to share?

Something that has been important to me, no matter where I am geographically or where I am situated professionally, is to maintain the capacity to be surprised by joy: small moments, large moments, or “in-between” moments. Two recent examples for me are being able to informally coach an employee who’s volunteered to lead one of our employee resource group projects, in collaboration with external community healthcare organizations. And being able to swim and snorkel with sea turtles around me in Curacao a few years ago.