Applying Healthcare Instructional Design Strategies that Work

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If you are responsible for the continuing education of medical professionals, the importance of Healthcare Instructional Design Strategies that Work is clear.  Healthcare workers are busy, and it is often difficult, if not impossible to get a group together during working hours.  How then, do you teach and document new skills, and provide meaningful continuing education?

healthcare instructional designThe answer is to use personalized educational programs, that have been designed just for your needs.  Avidity Medical Design can provide these programs.  If your staff is self directed, and motivated to learn, you can choose mobile programs.   These learning modules can be completed on the employee’s own time.  If your employees don’t want to take their work home with them, choose a traditional program.  This would be completed as a group learning experience. Another option is a combination approach, where part of the module is completed by the individual, and and then a review is done as a group.

Continuing education requirements vary state by state.  Customized course development assures that these requirements will be met.  Staff will stay up to date, and competent.  Nursing Continuing Education Requirement Chart, from the American Nurses Organization, shows the hours required by each state.  Even if your state does not require documented hours, the importance of maintaining competency cannot be stressed enough. Also, nurses are not the only staff that need continuing education. All staff have to remain up to date, and competent.

An article in Propublica.org documents the astounding statistics of errors in United States hospitals.  It is reported that up to 98,000 deaths a year are as result of error.  This number is just from hospitals.  Errors also occur at walk-in clinics, dialysis clinics, ambulatory surgical facilities, etc.  These errors were not intentional, but none the less, lives were lost.  This shows how absolutely necessary it is for healthcare workers to remain competent.

For more information on Healthcare Instructional Design, please Contact Us.

Moodle for Medicine: Choosing a Learning Management System for Healthcare Students That Works

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One of the most important decisions you can make for your healthcare students is choosing the right learning management system (LMS). Choosing the right LMS is important because it helps students navigate successfully within each course, and it helps professors fulfill the requirements of teaching the course and facilitating ongoing communication with students. There are many different learning management systems on the market today. Some of the most popular LMS platforms include Moodle, Blackboard, Angel, and eCollege. Let’s look at how each of these platforms can be used in the context of healthcare education.

Moodle for medicine

Moodle

Moodle has all the features of a typical learning management system such as assignment submission and online grading. Moodle also has a discussion forum, instant messaging, online calendars, online news and announcements and can facilitate online quizzes. In addition, Moodle users are continually developing third-party plugins that can be used with this LMS. Moodle provides a centralized location for submitting assignments, taking online quizzes, and participating in discussion forums.
Blackboard

Blackboard is an incredibly popular learning management system that has been on the market for years. It offers seven different platforms for its learning management systems that have been adapted for use by K-12 schools, universities and  companies. Blackboard offers your students a tried-and-true learning management system to facilitate their studies.

Angel

Angel offers healthcare students and professors a very clean interface and extensive real world feedback. Angel’s interface is set up to engage busy students. Its opening screen allows student users to quickly check their course guide, see what’s new, look at current activities, track grades and look at their own personal lists of tasks or to do notes for each class. It has a feeling of activity associated with the student user screens. For professors, it offers real world data and feedback on student progress to streamline communication between instructors and students.

eCollege

eCollege is a learning management system that is produced by textbook provider Pearson. eCollege combines a learning management system with streamline access to textbooks. If your school uses Pearson textbooks to support your learning, eCollege integrates ebooks within its learning management system and offers students interactive ways to use their platform.

Which Learning Management System Is For You?

Moodle, Blackboard, Angel and eCollege are all learning management systems with something to offer your healthcare students. Please contact us to further discuss which of these learning management system will work best for your healthcare students. We can help guide you to the best choice for your students. We look forward to helping you.

Three Ways to Use Facebook to Train Healthcare Students

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Facebook has become not only a way to find old friends or learn about the weekend’s events, it is also an incredible learning tool, for students of healthcare and countless other topics.  Teachers can utilize Facebook for class projects, for enhancing communication, and for engaging students in a manner that might not be entirely possible in traditional classroom settings.  Be creating a page specifically for the class, managing the privacy settings to exclude outside visitors, and connecting the class blog or online learning homepage to Facebook, healthcare students have a relaxed, inviting atmosphere of learning that encourages How to use facebook to train healthcare studentsparticipation and engagement.

Facebook encourages participation in class projects and class discussions where classroom learning often fails.  Healthcare students could be instructed to follow current news feeds.  There are dozens of pages related to the medical field, updated daily and broken down into sections for relevancy, keeping current information flowing through the class.  With the wealth of information available to healthcare scholars, students can review assigned topics, then post their abstracts on Facebook for other students to read, discuss, and peer-review.  An excellent way to ensure that healthcare students are more engaged in the learning experience—whether in a traditional classroom or at accredited online colleges—is by strengthening the communication between students and student-to-teacher.

Educators can create groups, schedule events, send messages, share multimedia, post class notes, make announcements, and post homework on Facebook, providing direct communication with instructors, facilitating classmate connections, and allowing shy students a way to communicate.  Healthcare students can even practice doctor-patient communication and bedside manner through Facebook messaging and comments.

Facebook for education offers students the opportunity for active communication on a level playing field.  Since students are likely familiar with Facebook already, implementing it into healthcare education and training provides comfortable, easy student access.  Facebook promotes collaboration, teaches personal responsibility, and keeps schools current in many medical and professional fields.

Please contact us to learn more tips on How To Use Facebook to Train Healthcare Students.

What Physicians Can Do To Fight The Rising Cost of Healthcare and Support Medical Necessity

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Everyone’s trying to tighten their belts lately, and the medical field is no exception. One way to fight the rising cost of healthcare and support medical necessity is with smart diagnoses, fewer unwarranted procedures, and a more open dialogue between doctor and patient. Here are some steps the physician can use to determine if a treatment is medically necessary:

  • Collect a complete medical history. Every medical exam has a portion of medical history Q&A to it, but patients sometimes forget a detail here or there. If you think that a few more facts about their past can change whether a procedure is done or not, then ask. Asking a few more questions to flush out the whole story can rising cost of healthcare and medical necessityenlighten you on what may really be going on.
  • Double check diagnosis. The human body reacts similarly to various problem, so symptoms can be present in a lot of differ diseases. Double checking your diagnosis for similar diseases and matching it up with your patient’s medical history can mean the difference between right diagnosis and misdiagnosis.
  • Ask if the procedures are necessary. Certain procedures are necessary, and others are just a precaution. An article Laurie Tarken released in Fitness Magazine noted in 2009, $325 billion of the nation’s $2.7 trillion annual health care bill went to unnecessary medical procedures. This explains why speciality physicians groups are calling on their members to stop reflexively calling for some 200 tests and procedures to be done. Instead, these physicians are being asked to consider the efficiency of the test, and look for more efficient methods to get a correct diagnosis or treatment.

To be fair, it’s not always possible to avoid asking for tests and procedures to be done, especially in specialities with a risk of high litigation. In that case, it may be possible to simply cut back on preventative measures, such as the annual physical exam to get our health checked out. For some people it may be necessary to get their health checked regularly, while others can go for years between exams without harm.

For example, Laura Esserman, M.D., a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force say that you can get a blood test for total cholesterol and HDL every 5 years as long as the findings are normal, but blood pressure testing should be done every other year unless it’s higher than the recommended levels for the patient’s age and fitness level.

Gaining the confidence necessary to diagnosis and call for the correct procedures comes with great training and lots of practice. This could help physicians fight the rising costs of healthcare and medical necessity over time. If you’d like to talk about this, or anything else, please contact us.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Brings Your Healthcare Training to Life

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Course design is all about pedagogy, understanding how we learn best. But it’s not enough just to learn something to know it, students also need to be able to apply it. Unfortunately, so much of medical education relies on rote learning and memorization. Students may not remember how many hours they spent pouring over flashcards before a pre-med anatomy and physiology exam. Likewise, students may not remember everything they were tested on. That’s because the learning they are expected to do doesn’t involve applying that knowledge in a real world healthcare setting (the cadaver lab doesn’t count).

At Avidity Medical Design, we employ Bloom’s Taxonomy in training healthcare learners to bring your education to life. Bloom’s Taxonomy is the pedagogy sine qua non for Bloom's Taxonomy Training Healthcare Learnersholistic, integrative learning. For a simplified understanding of this concept, consider this excerpt from Wikipedia:

Bloom’s taxonomy refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives). It divides educational objectives into three “domains”: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor (sometimes loosely described as “knowing/head”, “feeling/heart” and “doing/hands” respectively). Within the domains, learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels.[2] A goal of Bloom’s taxonomy is to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom’s_taxonomy)

The idea is to structure learning as simultaneous cognitive assimilation. Using given information, and understanding the intended application, we design our lesson plans to teach intellectual understanding and real-life, physical application at the same time. This approach saves time in the classroom and negates the need for flashcards and hours of homework.

Furthermore, our lesson plans based on Bloom’s Taxonomy are structured to include strategic variables that increase the depth of knowledge on a given topic. Your healthcare learners will be challenged to understand the idea on a cognitive level and to apply that understanding in different settings with different tools. Your students learn key concepts, standard procedures, and effective improvisation techniques all in one lesson.

Today’s healthcare industry is a fast changing environment that demands constant adaptation. Training healthcare learners requires education that can adapt just as fast. At Avidity Medical Design, we are dedicated to ensuring the highest quality education by using the most effective learning tools to produce students who are as detailed as they are innovative. Contact us to learn more about how we can design the most effective and engaging courses to bring your healthcare training to life.

Healthcare Education in “the Cloud” Pours Information Into Our Hands

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How does “the cloud” enhance the educational experience of today’s healthcare professional? The cloud gives students unbridled access to the information they need to grow in the profession.

Gone are the days when flashcards were the only way to test a student’s knowledge. Technological innovations such as the smartphone, tablet and apps have transformed the landscape of healthcare education forever. The quest for healthcare knowledge is migrating to apps where information is available 24/7.

healthcare education in the cloudYour Health: There is an App For That

A report released by mobile industry analyst Research2Guidance predicts that by 2017, 3.4 billion people will have accessto tablets and smartphones with access to mobile healthcare apps. Of the 3.4 billion, 1.7 billion people will have downloaded them. To say that healthcare apps are popular is an understatement. That being said, how does the cloud and the mobile movement in general help hospitals train their staff for 21st century healthcare?

Raining Down Information

The cloud allows hospitals to reach physicians and other healthcare practitioners wherever they are. Being “in the cloud” also allows hospitals to train staff year round without the ebb and flow of information that comes from older forms of information sharing such as journals and conferences.The power of the cloud and mobile technology is undeniable. Knowledge is power and technology releases that power for the good of humanity.

Thirst For Knowledge

The availability of healthcare training apps has exploded over the last couples of years. Many nurses and healthcare professionals turn to their smartphones to acquire new information on drugs, diseases and procedures.

A study conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams Wilkins (LLW) of 3,900 nurses indicated in early 2012, 71 percent of nurses were already using smartphones professionally. Medical practitioners should be encouraged to download reputable healthcare applications and use them to increase their fund of knowledge and reduce the likelihood of medical errors. Here is a short list of apps that hospitals can use to improve patient care:

  1. Nursing Central
  2. NurseTabs: Fundamentals by AusQuinn
  3. NCSBN Learning Extension Medication Flashcards
  4. The Merck Manuals For Mobile
  5. Shots By STFM

 

E-Learning Platforms

The power of e-Learning helps hospitals stay current on emerging trends using the right healthcare platforms. Here is a brief overview of the most popular platforms available:

HealthStream Learning Center – The most widely adopted learning management system in the healthcare industry. An estimated 3.4 million healthcare workers actively use their system.

TidWiT Social Learning Solutions –  A learning platform that offers social healthcare solutions for medical providers. The platform is 100% cloud based.

There are a variety of approaches that hospitals can use to provide continuing education for healthcare professionals, whether they are nurses, physicians, coders, or CEOs. Cloud, apps, and e-Learning solutions are the future. Incorporating these solutions into a comprehensive continuing education program creates durable and long-lasting change for all healthcare professionals. Contact us today to discuss how we can bring your current healthcare training program into the future.

Positive Prognosis for Mobile Learning for Healthcare Professionals

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Mobile learning for healthcare professionals is alive and well. Many healthcare facilities are cashing in on the ease and convenience of mobile devices for learning and continuing education credits. The methods of mobile learning are also changing as technology advances and becomes accessible to a wide array of professionals in more areas around the world.

1. Mobile Phones

As mobile phones get smarter, their ability to teach increases. Even the poorest countries, such as Nepal, have found they can use smartphones to learn more about proper medical care and research. Professionals are able to read, take pictures, share videos and discuss issues with others in remote corners of the world. Questions are answered faster and answers are accessible in the office right away.

2. Tablets

mobile learning for healthcareTablets are becoming more versatile and much easier to use in healthcare learning. They can stand alone and present information in a larger format, allowing students to see details from further away. Students can work through lessons on the tablet and gain hands-on experience in medical case management. Larger screens lead to easier online test taking, clearer demonstrations, and opportunities to review medical details that may otherwise be missed on a smaller screen.

3. Laptops and Desktops

Many healthcare professionals around the world use the standard computer simply because it saves time. There is no commute time to a classroom for continuing education courses, test taking is instantaneous, and classes can be completed in real time. The overhead cost in time saved equals a more successful practice. A higher number of healthcare facilities are using mobile learning to keep employees on site and to save valuable time.

Mobile learning has opened so many doors for the healthcare field that it is nearly replacing brick-and-mortar learning. It makes sense to keep doctors and nurses on site while they learn, and it costs less to bring an educator into the building. Learning from a mobile device is the education of the future, and it can be expected to continue in the healthcare field.

To talk more about this, or anything else, please Contact Us. Thanks!

Technology Makes Mobile Learning Possible for Nurses in Understaffed Hospitals

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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

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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

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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.