Technology Makes Mobile Learning Possible for Nurses in Understaffed Hospitals

Posted on by

Mobile learning is changing the landscape of nursing education. Handheld devices are helping nurses provide safer patient care as they are being trained in the classroom, clinic, and laboratory settings. Safer patient care means less chance of medical error, less chance of surgical complications, and a potentially shorter length of stay in the hospital due to an expedited recovery time.

Smartphone nurse

The results of a study by the American Journal of Infection Control showed that over a third of nurses report they are feeling burnt out by their profession. Nurse burnout is caused by inadequate hospital staffing due to a shortage of skilled nurses. Mobile technology underscores online learning and traditional classroom training by allowing nurses to use handheld devices to quickly access the information they need.

This optimizes patient care, minimizes stress, and reduces the likelihood of burnout.

According to an article in the Huffington Post, “Advanced nursing education is empowering nurses to lead the way. More and more aspects of the profession are electronic…mobile devices, electronic medical records, cloud computing, and teleconferencing — invite nurses to be digitally ambitious.”

Nursing Classroom Abilities Increase

Mobile technology helps nursing students analyze critical information. Using mobile platforms, nurses can address simulated patient scenarios to reinforce the lessons learned from actual case studies. Mobile technology provides a wealth of nursing information in seconds.

Preventing Medical Errors

Using smartphones, IPods, and iPads reduces the likelihood of medication errors. Mobile technology helps nursing students immediately access information on safe dosages, drug interactions, and medication compatibility. With mobile technology,
nurses do not have to locate pharmaceutical references or contact a pharmacist for dosage and medication information. The information that they need is right at their fingertips.

Increased Engagement

Research shows that nurses become more engaged in the learning process when their training includes handheld devices.

According to an article in AdvanceWeb, “Kent State University College of Nursing undergraduates use seven mobile
references to develop conceptual care maps on clinical patients…Students ‘map out’ their patient assessment data, history, medications, lab values and treatments prior to documenting the reasons for each medication and lab value deviation and developing a patient-centered plan of care.”

Additionally, course textbook availability no longer becomes an issue. Mobile technology provides the most up-to-date information, and nursing students can immediately incorporate this information into the classroom.

Cost Effective

The software for smartphones and tablets is much less expensive than the cost of medical books, and nursing students can use the software to complete assignments throughout the course.

If you would like to know more about mobile learning for nurses in understaffed hospitals, we can help. Contact us today to learn more.

 

 

 

Six Easy Ways to Motivate, Educate, and Stimulate Your Healthcare Students

Posted on by

Let’s face it, it’s easy to start out with good intentions. Healthcare textbooks are designed to educate students on medical and surgical terminology, anatomy and physiology, and medical processes and procedures. The depth and complexity of the material can sometimes keep healthcare students from becoming as motivated as they should be. That’s why it’s important for students to have a healthcare course that incorporates a variety of strategies that help them stay motivated. The teacher also plays an important role because he or she motivates, educates, and stimulates healthcare students. Let’s look at six strategies for motivating healthcare students:

  • State expectations clearly. Starting off on the right foot is the key to maintaining motivation and increasing the likelihood of success in any endeavor. The best way for both teachers and students to start off on the right foot is with a clHealthcare Studentsear list of expectations. The students will be motivated to meet the teacher’s expectations when the students know what the expectations are. Teachers, in turn, will find themselves more motivated knowing that students are on the right path to learning.
  • Incorporate school work into the plan. It is easy to get so caught up in teaching that the work placed on the students after they walk out of the classroom is forgotten about. The teacher can help by weaving in tips on how to do the assignments to keep the students engaged and motivated even after they leave class. This strategy may lighten the load for teachers from the standpoint of grading assignments also.
  • Establish goals for the curriculum. It’s easier for students to stay motivated when the big picture is clear. Instead of just moving from lesson to lesson until the exam, try creating a theme that can set students up for a monthly goal. One goal might be to ask students to demonstrate how the anatomical structure of the arm allows a pitcher to throw a baseball. By the end of the lesson, students are able to accurately describe the parts of the arm, and how these parts work together to facilitate throwing an object, such as a baseball.
  • Encourage rewards. Grade school may be long past, but everyone responds well to rewards. Find fun, creative ways to reward healthcare students both in the physical classroom and online. Celebrate victories when they successfully master tough topics, such as correctly abstracting diagnoses and procedures from a complex medical record.
  • Maintain engagement. Whether teaching online or in the traditional classroom, staying engaged with each student is necessary to create a motivating atmosphere. Stay engaged by incorporating healthcare-related games, crossword puzzles, and other fun ideas into the curriculum.
  • Keep a positive attitude. A positive attitude can make the difference between having lackluster feelings about a course and really being motivated to learn the material. When students aren’t feeling motivated because they are struggling to learn the material, teachers should maintain a positive upbeat attitude and offer positive words of encouragement.

Creative course creation can incorporate a variety of strategies to help students maintain motivation. It might take some simple word changes or sidebars with ideas for motivation in certain areas of the curriculum, but it can be done.

If you need help creating great healthcare lessons that encourage student motivation, send us a message to get started.

Mobile Learning: A Revolution In The Making

Posted on by

The advantages of mobile learning and the steps that can be taken to optimize the mobile learning experience for healthcare students and professionals are boundless. With today’s technology, the opportunity to learn is literally in the palm of a student’s hand. There has never been a time in history when the power of knowledge has been so widely available to the world. Taking advantage of this technological breakthrough has enhanced the learning experience for every profession.

Mobile Learning Is The Future

America is the home of mobile tech and we love it. Here are a few facts that you may find interesting. Did you know that 58% of Americans own a smartphone? Did you know mobile learning avidity medical designthat 42% of Americans own a tablet? This means that the students of the future are increasingly going to demand learning solutions that fit their busy schedules. Why is this so attractive to students and professors alike? Mobile learning allows for convenience, flexibility, engagement and interactivity that is lacking in other instructional settings. The data is clear that mobile learning is the wave of the future.

Optimizing The Mobile Learning Experience

In order to optimize the learning environment for students and professionals, we must change the way we view learning. Learning is a lifelong process that doesn’t have an on and off switch. From the time a student wakes up until the time they rest their heads on their pillows at night, they are learning. Learning is a seamless experience that requires different tools for different situations. Wireless, Mobile, and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education or WMUTE are the tools that can be used to optimize and revolutionize the learning experience. Click here

Design With A Purpose

Our core mission here at Avidity Medical Design is to develop curriculum that is informative, challenging, comprehensive and holistic. Staying up to date on trends in medicine is paramount to success. We design healthcare courses and review each course for technical accuracy. Regardless of the subject matter, we design courses that are engaging, innovative, and that support key learning objectives.

Sheila D. McCray, MS, CCS, CCS-P, is the principal of Avidity Medical Design, an instructional design consulting firm specializing in creating e-learning and blended learning for both the educational and corporate sectors.

Students who complete courses developed by Avidity Medical Design will have the knowledge and confidence needed to optimize work performance and achieve greater job satisfaction. Contact us today about our services and how we can help your students achieve excellence in the field of healthcare.

Hiring a Healthcare Course Writer vs. Creating Your Own Content

Posted on by

A common scenario in healthcare e-Learning goes something like this: A healthcare organization places a strong emphasis on education. For years they avidity medical design healthcare instructorhone their patient education programs, keep staff up to date with certifications, and develop some basic healthcare courses to provide additional training. They watch a live demo, are empowered by what they see, and they begin to move forward with curriculum development. This is where the problems start.

Becoming a healthcare course writer is not an easy task. Oftentimes people know what they want to say but have no idea how to say it. If they do manage to get the words on paper, they get lost in the world of learning management systems and authoring tools. They also discover that they must function as healthcare subject matter experts as well as healthcare course writers to ensure that the course is technically accurate. Before long, months go by and the project is scrapped.

This scenario underscores the importance of hiring an experienced healthcare instructional designer. Ideas for healthcare education often land in the virtual trash can before they ever reach the storyboard stage of development. This happens because the possibility of outsourcing course development was never considered. A talented healthcare course writer can collaborate on ideas and cultivate those that already exist in order to create a comprehensive course that is technically accurate and gets the job done.

Avidity Medical Design expands healthcare training to reach a broader base of clients. Whether you need help preparing staff for the transition to ICD-10 medical coding, or you need to train nurses on the fundamentals of patient assessments, you can have a visually pleasing course created and uploaded to your learning management system.

If you need help developing an in-depth course that accurately meets the learning objectives for your particular healthcare specialty, contact us. We will work with you to achieve your goals for curriculum development.

Smartphones, Tablets, iPODs and iPADs: What Do They Mean for the Healthcare Classroom? Let’s Take a Look.

Posted on by

More and more students are discovering the benefits of taking college courses online using smartphones, tablets, iPODs and iPADs. Students can review lecture material, study for finals, and take exams at home or while sitting in a café or a restaurant, for example. Although many people have taken advantage of mobile technology for general education purposes, healthcare practitioners may wonder what smartphones, tablets, iPODs and iPADs have in store for the future of healthcare education.

smartphones, tablets ipods ipads avidity medical designAccording to an article found here, “44% of medical students are digital omnivores, using a smartphone, tablet, and computer routinely in an academic or professional capacity.” This has increased over the years ever since these options were made available to students.

Mobile devices are a great way for students to learn on the go, as well as in the traditional classroom. As stated in another blog, titled, Benefits of Mobile Devices in the Classroom, “The mobile approach can encourage student engagement with the content. For example, students can answer polls, tweet questions, and look up information during lectures.” The same is true for students in the healthcare arena, who are studying to become medical transcriptionists, medical coders, and registered nurses, for example. Using mobile devices, a student who is studying to become a medical transcriptionist can respond to polls about transcribing medications in discharge summaries, history and physicals, and emergency room records. A future medical coder can tweet questions about how to assign the correct ICD-10-CM code for a postsurgical mechanical device complication, or how to assign the correct CPT codes for injections, infusions, and critical care. A nursing student can research lecture material on patient case management, sterile gloving, and right and left heart catheterization. Using smartphones, tablets, iPODs, and iPADs each of these students can enrich their learning experience both in and out of the healthcare classroom.

Avidity Medical Design can help you develop healthcare courses that support and encourage medical mobile learning. We develop healthcare curriculum designed to help your students immediately transfer what they learn in the classroom to the doctor’s office, clinic, or hospital setting. We specialize in both e-Learning and blended learning for both the educational and corporate sectors.

Sheila D. McCray, MS, CCS, CCS-P, the principal of Avidity Medical Design, has an M.S. in Instructional and Performance Technology and holds certifications in Captivate, Dreamweaver, Sharepoint, MS Office, and multiple healthcare-related areas. She is also a certified online instructor, medical coder, medical biller, and medical transcriptionist with an extensive background in healthcare information management. She designs curriculum for all areas of healthcare, as well as general education curriculum for K-12 students.

Feel free to contact us for more information on how we can incorporate innovative mobile learning strategies into your healthcare classroom.

4 Ways to Motivate Healthcare Students to Learn in the Classroom

Posted on by

applying the ARCS model of learning avidity medical designHealthcare can be a challenging subject to learn, especially since there are so many areas of healthcare that require fundamental knowledge of medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, medical coding, and other areas of allied health. If you are working as an instructional designer, especially if you are developing courses in healthcare, you must develop courses that not only educate, it also stimulate and motivate. One of the most fundamental methods of motivational design is John Keller’s ARCS Model. John Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivational Design includes four elements that are designed to motivate students to learn: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Innovative educators have long used the ARCS Model to improve learning outcomes by stimulating and maintaining student motivation. The ARCS Model becomes even more critical from the standpoint of healthcare instructional design because a lack of learning motivation can have a detrimental impact on patient care.

Let’s take a look at how the four elements of the ARCS Model, Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction, would be implemented in the context of healthcare instructional design:

1. Attention – Keller uses “inquiry arousal” to gain the learner’s attention. Inquiry arousal means incorporating questions or problems in the curriculum that are designed to be solved by a group of students. Case studies that require active participation, such as those dealing with specific patient scenarios, diseases, or other illnesses can be useful in gaining and sustaining attention.

2. Relevance – The curriculum should include examples that are relevant to connect to the student’s own experience(s). According to this element of the ARCS Model, if students can correlate their prior experience(s) to the new skills that they are learning, they will be more motivated to learn.

3. Confidence – Learners must have confidence in their ability to succeed if they complete the course. They must know that they will learn valuable skills that they can transfer to the real-world environment and immediately apply in their normal workday.

4. Satisfaction – Keller states that learning should be rewarding so that students see the value of what is being taught. This makes them more motivated to learn. One way to increase learner satisfaction is to allow students to practice the new skill being taught or to apply the new knowledge being attained in a live setting. For example, healthcare practitioners could demonstrate methods of gathering vital statistics, comparing test results, and analyzing recorded data in the doctor’s office or triage unit.

Contact us to learn more about the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, and how we can incorporate this model into your healthcare curriculum to motivate your students to learn.

If you are interested in taking an online healthcare course, consider enrolling in the course entitled, “How to Learn in the Healthcare Classroom (and ANY Classroom) (in 10 EASY Steps!)” offered by Avidity Medical Design Academy. Click here to learn more about this course. If you are interested in purchasing scented candles and soaps that promote health and wellness through inspirational messages, visit Avidity Medical Scentations to see our current product offerings.