Elearning Solutions for the Healthcare Industry
Though Continuing Education (CE) in the US healthcare workforce education and training has reoriented to Continued Professional Development (CPD), it is a frequent lament in U.S. healthcare professional training L&D and training departments that the focus on meeting regulatory and compliance requirements has meant that CE/CPD have been structured around health professional participation instead of performance improvement. Finding relevance for clinical settings and improving patient outcomes necessitates that didactic teaching methods are replaced with cognitivist instructional design in elearning development as the case studies listed here amply illustrate.
Continuous Medical Education
A medical services company needed a continuing medical education training solution to train registered nurses on awareness of disease, treatment options, patient safety, and laboratory procedures. The suggested solution was self-directed elearning, which allowed the nurses to set their own pace, review content when needed, and personalize learning experiences. The elearning focused on enhancing the provider performance and ultimately improving the patient outcomes.
42 Design Square developed a structured suite of 10 modules to cover diverse subjects of anatomy and physiology to medications to lab specimen collection. Cognitivist instructional design was applied to create touch and drag interactivity wherein nurses could interact with concrete imagery, which allowed them to form accurate mental models of the course content. For example, nurses could practice organizing the laboratory tube collection to indicate the correct order of draw and they received continual and immediate feedback on the appropriateness of their actions. This “learner-shows” practice was built on prerequisite “learner-knows” practice, wherein the nurses had to match the color-coded tube sets to their order and purpose. The course included practice activities that simulated the clinical setting and capitalized on learner response-feedback loop. It also built a cognitive model of anatomy and physiology by requiring learners identify parts and functions in visual representations. The course ended with randomized certification assessments for tracking the completion status on the learning management system.
Clinical Setting Simulation
Our client required a training module on the treatment of Peritonitis, a life-threatening infection in peritioneal dialysis patients. The solution created was game-based elearning, which simulated the clinical setting as is much valued by clinical education experts. The orientation of the learning was shifted from subject-centered to problem-centered to engage the learners via usefulness of the knowledge.
The health professional had to respond to medical cases that captured a diverse variety of clinical conditions and prescribe the appropriate treatment and medication. In doing so, the health professional could visit the lab (a tab in the game environment) to view the relevant lab report, which worked as direction or hint. To simulate real-life challenges, the learner had to search for the appropriate medication/treatment option in three sets of options rather than choosing one medication from a set of options in which one was always correct. To further create real-life like setting, the learner could use up three free consultations with expert advice (again a tab, where expert medical opinion would be available). The scoring of the game encouraged getting the answer correct in the first try, and if in doubt, knowing when to consult an expert. All in all, a fast-paced gamified elearning experience, which bridged the clinical setting into a learning experience.
Online Seminars to Video-based Elearning
The pandemic meant that in-person conferences gave way to online seminars; today, most experts are now comfortable with imparting training over virtual seminars. A key tenet of CME is that experience and expertise is a resource of learning. One provider was using recorded seminars as a resource and asked us if we could do something that would make it learning management friendly. A two-hour continuous seminar video is not an inviting proposition—even if you left it mid-way through, finding your way back again is a challenge.
The solution was a simple, robust elearning which leveraged and repackaged the seminar video into a menu-driven bit-chunked and structured elearning divided over about 50-60 slides, with interactions interspersed within the course, closed captions added to the video, a search feature to locate a relevant slide, and the facility to view the speaker’s presentation slide while the speaker video played. We even converted the poll questions conducted during the virtual seminar into interactive quizzes, followed by video feedback from the expert speakers themselves. Audience questions were converted into interactive questions, wherein the learners could listen to the answers they were interested in. To add to it, a compliance tracking-friendly end of course assessment ended the course.
Infection Control and Patient Safety
A health care services company needed to impart its nurses knowledge and skills via infection control training, research findings, methods, and measures. A blended-learning product was created, with elearning as a pre-requisite that focused on the declarative content and an instructor-led and job-aid assisted program that focused on the procedural content.
The elearning meaningfully emphasized the importance of hygiene practices such as hand hygiene, appropriate waste disposal, and preventive vaccinations, which can be considered part of workplace safety training. The procedural content required “learner-shows” interactions, which allowed for teachable moments to be capitalized with instructor feedback. A teachable moments booklet was designed for preventive healthcare training specialists who implemented a self-sustaining and continual correction environment in the “learner-does” peer-to-peer evaluations, which served as on-the-job training.
HIPAA and Privacy
A pharma and laboratory testing services company needed to create a course on HIPAA as part of its patient rights training and ethical code of conduct with overarching compliance requirements. The solution included an interactive elearning course that exposed the learners to a divergent range of ambiguous scenarios to generalize their cognitive learning. For example, interactions included mock medical history documents with fictitious patient personal information and the learner needed to redact information to protect patient privacy. Similarly, interactive scenarios were created with grey areas to test the learner’s understanding of the ethical code of conduct; these included conference interactions to one-on-one meetings with medical professionals, which the learner was expected to handle ethically and tactfully.
Medical Device Operation
A medical device company required patients and caregivers to be trained to perform a sequence of steps, monitor treatment as it progressed, respond to alarms, troubleshoot errors, and complete the treatment procedure based on the prescription. The device included an electronic performance support system (EPSS) that guided the user to operate the machine. The course was also to used as orientation for medical device sales training by its marketing executives.
42 Design Square created a high-fidelity simulation using CAD files to create interactive 3D medical device perspectives, wherein the patient learner could perform the steps in as real and authentic setting by approximating psycho-motor steps in the elearning format. Continual remedial feedback was used to chain the behavior of performing the procedure correctly in the first try, and when in doubt, the elearning encouraged learner to refer to the readily available EPSS available in the high-fidelity simulation. The elearning prolifically used touch and drag interactions to simulate concrete experiences and provided immediate feedback on errors. The performance recap documented the user tries to identify the correct step and the appropriate use of the EPSS learning guidance.
Quality Improvement and EHR
The health services industry has steadily moved to electronic health records (EHR) as the preferred system of medical records, data annotation, data storage, data analysis, and process improvement. The health provider required standardized training package to train nurses on implementing the EHR system.
The solution included a suite of elearning modules that created a cognitive model of the ICD-10 diagnosis codes, interactivities to populate the data templates, and scenario-based interactions to identify and report adverse events. The quality improvement modules included scenarios, which required the learners to do a root cause analysis of data provided and factor the root cause analysis into the planning and implementation of quality improvement initiatives to meet the medical facility goals and targets.
Telemedicine Education
The pandemic also had providers requesting training for telemedicine implementation for remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telehealth initiatives. One solution we created by consulting with telehealth training experts focused on online interviewing and examining the patient skills for medical professionals.
The elearning created scenarios with limited but frequently encountered hurdles that the health professionals were required to address with their patient interviewing and examining skills. These scenarios helped the health professionals in gathering information about the patient and confirming the information through visual and auditory cues available in the communication set-up. The course also sensitized the providers and staff to the unique cultural identity of the patient and offered cues to infer the daily routines and challenges of the patient.
42 Design Square is a US-based custom elearning firm and a leading healthcare training company with more than a decade of experience in creating cognitivist instructional design, highly interactive, and business-goal-focused courses for its clients in healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. We are also medical product and device education experts with considerable human factor awareness when designing training for patients. We are attuned to the L&D challenges and needs in healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations to continually maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills, and professional performance of the medical and scientific personnel. Our elearning solutions enable organizations to leverage their medical experts and their experience as a resource for continued professional development of their staff.
