A full year of staff in-services, written for you and ready to teach.
186 complete, fully customizable in-service lessons covering the CMS-required training topics every skilled nursing and assisted living facility has to teach — built to federal standards and ready to use in any state. Add your facility’s details and you’ve just saved yourself days of planning.
Every lesson gives you all five:
- A complete lesson plan (CDPH-278 format)
- Plain-English student handout
- Post-lesson quiz with answer key
- Word-for-word speaker notes
- A ready-to-present slide deck
You became a DSD to lead care — not to live in lesson plans
If you run staff development, you know the grind. Federal rules require ongoing in-service education on dozens of topics, and every survey expects to see it documented. So you spend evenings and weekends building lesson plans, handouts, quizzes and slides from a blank page — over and over, topic after topic. It quietly eats days out of every month. This library hands you all of it, already written and ready to teach, so you can get back to the residents, the staff, and the life that pulled you into this work in the first place.
Built to federal CMS standards
Every lesson is written to the federal CMS training requirements and the F-Tags surveyors inspect — the standards that apply to nursing facilities in all 50 states, not just one.
Fully customizable
Editable Word and PowerPoint you can shape to your state, your facility, and your own voice. Drop your details into the labeled blanks and make every lesson your own in minutes.
Saves you days
A full year of in-service prep — plans, handouts, quizzes, notes and slides — done for you. Reclaim the evenings and weekends you’d have spent building it from scratch.
Every lesson is a complete teaching packet
You are not buying a stack of outlines or a single handout. Every one of the 186 topics comes as a full packet — everything you need to actually stand up and teach the in-service, and then prove that you did. Here is exactly what you get for each and every topic:
A complete lesson plan
This is the backbone of the in-service and the document a survey expects to see. It is laid out on a professional lesson-plan form (the CDPH-278 format) and already filled in with the learning objectives, the full teaching content written out in order, the references behind it, and a review section — so the plan of instruction is documented for you before you teach a word.
A plain-English student handout
A printable one-to-two-page take-away your staff can follow along with and keep. It puts the topic in everyday language — the key terms, the must-know points, the step-by-step of the actual procedure, a clear "do this / not that," and exactly when to stop and report to the nurse.
A post-lesson quiz with answer key
A short, fair knowledge check that gives you objective proof your staff understood the material — the kind of documented competency your in-service records are meant to show. It comes with a ready-to-grade answer key, so scoring takes a minute.
Word-for-word speaker notes
A complete script for the entire lesson. You can teach the topic with confidence even on a day you had zero time to prepare, or hand the script to a charge nurse to deliver in your place — no slides required, nothing to memorize.
A ready-to-present slide deck
A finished, professional slide presentation for group in-services, with the talking points already built in. You walk into the room, open the file, and simply teach.
Take a peek inside a real lesson
Here is an actual lesson from the library — Fall Prevention in the Elderly — and the five ready-to-use pieces you get for it, and for every other topic. The [highlighted] spots are the labeled blanks you fill in with your own facility’s details in seconds.
“Good afternoon — welcome to today’s in-service on Fall Prevention in the Elderly. Please sign in on the attendance sheet before we begin. We’ll go about 45 minutes, then a short 15-question quiz…”
And you get all five, like this, for every one of the 186 topics.
Every required subject — already written for you
The library covers the full range of subjects that federal CMS rules and facility policy expect you to teach your staff over the course of a year. Instead of a handful of samples, you get 186 complete lessons spanning the 16 training categories below. So whether this month’s in-service is on infection control, dementia behaviors, abuse prevention, resident rights or safe transfers, the lesson is already researched, written and waiting — you simply pick the topic and teach it.
A few of the actual lessons inside
And everything you need to run and document each session
- A START HERE guide and a How to Customize & Deliver walkthrough, so you know exactly how to use the package from day one.
- A full Table of Contents that groups every lesson by training category, so you can plan your year at a glance.
- A blank lesson-plan template (in the CDPH-278 format) so you can build brand-new topics in the same professional style.
- A blank attendance sign-in sheet to capture who attended — the documentation your in-service file needs.
Save days of work, not just an afternoon
Think about what it actually takes to build one in-service properly: you research the current standard, write a compliant lesson plan, create a handout your staff will really read, write a fair quiz and its answer key, draft speaker notes so you can deliver it, and then build a slide deck to present it. Done well, that is most of a working day — for a single topic.
Now multiply that by the dozens of topics you are expected to cover in a year, and you are looking at weeks of work that almost always happens on your own time. This library does all of that for you. Your job shrinks to a few minutes of customizing per lesson — which means the evenings and weekends you would have lost to lesson planning are simply yours again.
A full year of in-services, covered.
Building a single complete in-service from scratch can take most of a day. This gives you 186 of them — ready to make your own in minutes each.
Everything is fully customizable — nothing is locked
These are ordinary, unlocked Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files — not flat PDFs and not sealed templates. Every place that would name a specific facility is left as a clearly labeled blank: the facility name, the instructor, the date, the license number. A single find-and-replace drops your information into an entire document at once, so personalizing a lesson takes a minute or two, not an afternoon.
From there, the lesson is genuinely yours. You can reword anything to match your own policies and procedures, add your logo, or swap the lesson-plan form for your state’s version. Trim a lesson down for a quick fifteen-minute shift huddle, or expand it into a full hour of training. The materials are a professional starting point you shape to your facility — never a straitjacket you have to work around.
- Editable Word & PowerPoint — open, change and print in Office, Google Docs/Slides, or free LibreOffice.
- Labeled blanks for facility name, instructor, date and license number — fill them with one find-and-replace.
- Adapt to your state — adjust the wording or swap in your own state’s lesson-plan form.
- Match your policies — edit any content so it reflects how your facility actually does things.
- Resize to fit — shorten for a shift huddle or expand for a full in-service hour.
- Yours to keep — reuse them year after year, no subscription and no expiry.
Made for the person who runs staff development
Directors of Staff Development
In any state — deliver a full year of in-services without giving up your evenings to write them.
In-service coordinators & staff educators
A consistent, professional, survey-ready lesson for every topic on your training calendar.
Skilled nursing & assisted living facilities
Standardize training across units and shifts, and keep your education file ready for inspection.
New DSDs & anyone handed the training binder
Start with a complete, ready-made curriculum instead of a blank page and a deadline.
From purchase to teaching in minutes
Download instantly
Check out securely and get your download right away, plus a backup link by email. There is no account to create and nothing to wait for.
Make it yours
Open the lesson you need and run a quick find-and-replace to fill in your facility name, your name and the date. Adjust any wording, or swap the form for your state’s, in just a few minutes.
Teach it
Present the slide deck to the group, or read straight from the word-for-word speaker notes. Hand out the take-away, and give the quiz to check understanding.
Document it
Collect the completed sign-in sheet and file it with the graded quizzes. That is your proof of training, ready the next time a surveyor asks to see it.
Written by a licensed nurse and practicing DSD
Every lesson was created by a licensed nurse and practicing Director of Staff Development with more than 25 years of healthcare and healthcare-education experience — the same person behind the DSD Certify course — and written to the federal CMS standards that apply nationwide. It is a teaching resource, not legal advice; always confirm your state’s current requirements and align the content with your own facility’s policies before use.
Questions, answered
New to the DSD role? Get certified, too.
The DSD Certify course gives you your Director of Staff Development certification online — 24 CE hours, self-paced, with a verifiable certificate. It pairs perfectly with this lesson library.
Get your year of in-services back — for $49.
Stop rebuilding trainings from scratch. Download the complete library, make it yours in minutes, and walk into your next in-service — and your next survey — ready. Built to CMS standards, fully customizable, good in any state, and yours to keep.
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