How To Boost Healthcare Training With eLearning?
The healthcare industry is one where proper training and certifications are not only important but essential. And as the industry is involved in saving lives, preventing diseases and illnesses as well as helping people recover from said diseases and illnesses, its importance cannot be overstated. The healthcare industry is also one which moves really fast, with studies and research happening globally every minute, new developments taking place every day and heaps of medical and scientific journals being written all the time. Such an industry could benefit immensely if there was a smarter, quicker and more efficient way to train individuals working in it. Fortunately, such a methodology exists. You guessed it, eLearning. In this article, let us discuss how eLearning can be used to boost healthcare training and make this life-giving industry more efficient.
1. Offering Better Accessibility To Learning
Individuals such as doctors, surgeons, physicians, therapists, nurses, lab technicians, and radiologists, to name a few, need to stay updated with new industry developments, improve knowledge and add new skills all the time to keep up and ensure that they provide the best of services to patients. Presently, to do that, they must take time off of treating and caring for patients to study, as after working all day, and sometimes all night, it can be near impossible to attend classes. Fortunately, eLearning is independent of restrictions such as time and place and thus can be utilized to study in the office, at home or anywhere for that matter. eLearning is also mobile, which means it can be accessed via a laptop, tablet, or a smartphone as long as the user has an internet connection, which shouldn’t be a problem.
2. Helping Stay Updated With Industry Laws And Regulations
Hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations need to stay compliant with industry regulations and laws which are quite strict (as they should be). Failure to comply with such laws and regulations could result in lawsuits, heavy fines as well as the organization being closed down and practitioners losing their practicing license. eLearning can help healthcare professionals stay updated with industry laws and regulations using microlearning, which is an eLearning strategy in which information is broken up into bite-sized learning modules which don’t require any more than 5-10 minutes to go through. It saves time and improves retention.
3. Improving Practical Training Through Blended Learning
There are certain aspects of healthcare training, such as practical training (e.g. lab training, surgery training, etc.) which cannot be fully learned using eLearning alone. For such training, blended learning is a great solution. eLearning can have detailed visuals in addition to interactive and multimedia elements that provide in-depth knowledge about surgical and medical procedures as well as the synthesis of medicine and drugs, and can even offer simulations on how to perform such procedures. But, if this is found insufficient, proper classroom and practical training can be blended with eLearning to offer the ultimate, hybrid solution.
4. Helps Build A Knowledge Reservoir
By integrating an eLearning system at their organization, healthcare professionals build a database, which acts as a ‘knowledge reservoir’ they can turn to when they need to look for some information, or when they have a question. For example, they may have completed an eLearning course, but forgot some important detail when they need it the most. No problem! They can simply log in to their Learning Management System (LMS) and find whatever it is they were looking for within minutes. This is a great way to revise and relearn existing knowledge.
5. Saves Money
Finally, it all comes down to expense. Is eLearning cost-efficient? You bet it is. Most healthcare organizations already have a training program, which mostly utilizes traditional training methods such as classroom training, which require notes and study material as well as a trainer or instructor. By choosing eLearning, a healthcare organization saves money on hiring the trainer, as no trainer is required (except if you’re going for blended learning), no location is required for the classes to take place which would have an expensive rental and maintenance charges, and no learning material is required as everything takes place on the learner’s tablet, laptop or smartphones!
