eLearning For Healthcare And Pharmaceutical Training? 5 Reasons Proving It's An Excellent Idea
If there is one industry where the continual training of employees cannot be ignored, it is the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. While face-to-face training programs continue to remain popular in healthcare and pharma training, there are challenges, as mentioned above, in terms of time, space, and money. Therefore, this article will give you enough reasons to try eLearning solutions for healthcare and pharma training programs.
1. Deliver Accelerated Training
The training demands of the healthcare and pharma industry are unique. There might be sudden demands to train healthcare workers on handling a virus outbreak or scaling up the production of specific drugs to handle an epidemic. Both cases, clearly indicate a need for accelerated training. Waiting for classroom training programs to be scheduled will not serve your purpose.
What you need to look for is the rapid development of online training programs that can quickly address the need of the hour. Due to the specialized nature of content in healthcare and pharma training programs, custom eLearning solutions make a better investment.
2. Address Demographic Changes
Demographic shifts are a challenge to healthcare systems and place greater demands on the healthcare and pharma industries. The workforce in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry needs to keep pace with the changes in demography. Training needs also change considerably depending on the demography.
The United States, for example, is becoming increasingly ethnically diverse. There are certain health conditions that affect specific ethnic groups. Research [1] has proved that diabetes and liver disease occurs more frequently in the Hispanic population, whereas Asians are more susceptible to Hepatitis B. Medical and pharmaceutical professionals who are culturally aware can deal with these challenges effectively.
The Asia-Pacific region is home to half of the world’s seniors, and generally, the older the population, the more the need to equip the healthcare and pharma industry to deliver geriatric care and handle chronic illnesses. The frequency of drug consumption is rapid in markets with an aging population, and hence there is an increasing need to scale drug manufacturing and its sales.
Pharmaceutical training may need to be customized according to your marketplace because the geographic location has an impact on the selling style and sales success. All these shifts in demographics contribute to a greater need for on-demand, as well as region-specific training, which can be handled effectively through eLearning solutions.
3. Cater To A Global Workforce
Global healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations need to have structured training programs in place to ensure uniformity of knowledge transfer. Classroom training programs are largely dependent on the instructor’s method of training delivery, and the knowledge transfer that happens may not always be uniform.
When you use eLearning for healthcare and pharmaceutical training needs, you can be assured that all learners across the globe will receive the same content, delivered through effective instructional strategies. Also, online training programs can be translated into different languages and that makes learning more effective.
4. Make Learning Accessible
Because of the rapid growth of healthcare and pharma industries, employment opportunities in these sectors are more. This has provided employment opportunities to differently-abled people too. For training managers, this is an additional responsibility as they have to take care of the learning needs of these employees. Traditional training programs do not work well for the visually and hearing impaired. eLearning addresses this challenge by providing accessible learning for the differently-abled. Lectora, Storyline, and Captivate are some of the authoring tools that can be used to design accessible eLearning courses.
One of our clients, a global pharmaceutical company wanted to train its employees on corporate drug regulatory affairs and safety measures on the usage of drugs. The client’s requirement was to launch the course on their LCMS and make it accessible to hearing and visually impaired learners. While videos and visuals were part of the eLearning course for hearing impaired learners, audio provided adequate support for the visually challenged. The course included a lot of learner-friendly interactivities that may not be possible in a classroom training environment.
5. Provide A Risk-Free Learning Environment
Patient safety is of the utmost importance in the healthcare and pharma industry. Teaching the effective methods of patient safety in an Instructor-Led Training program is only going to make learners aware, it is not going to enable practicing what is preached. Effective retention of training happens only when learners get a chance to apply what they have learned.
Let’s consider an online training program for surgeons. Simulations of surgical procedures can provide trainee surgeons a risk-free environment to practice their skills, as compared to learning in the operating theater, where one mistake could cost one dearly.
The introduction of eLearning has brought about a revolution in the learning space of the healthcare and pharma industry. If you are thinking of the best ways to train your workforce, eLearning is a valuable option to consider to provide continual training.
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