At NHG, e-learning is heralding the future in cost
effective and targeted training. Find out why NHG
chooses the electronic way to train its employees,
the strategies driving it and how electronic training
can benefit you and your company too.
By: Mrs Olivia Tay, Chief Human Resource Officer, NHG
 The patient is having a heart attack! Help! He’s dying! What do I do?!
For Dr Eve Anwar, 24, fresh out of Melbourne University’s medical school, it was a (pardon the pun) life and death question that made her thoroughly nervous at her new job.
“As medical students, how to handle a dying patient is perhaps our greatest fear. In our textbooks, it’s all theory. In the hospital, it’s for real and the prospect made me very nervous,” she said, laughing at the memory or eight months ago.
Then, she had just joined the National Healthcare Group. The answer, and new found confidence, came from two e-learning courses, basic and advanced Cardiac Life Support courses, just weeks into her new job.
“It’s fantastic,” she said of the e-learning courses. The courses blended lectures by an experienced emergency room consultant with notes and information posted on NHG’s e-learning portal. Lectures were based on hospital cases, with hands-on practice on a training dummy and guidance from experienced nurses.
For revision, she needs only to click on NHG’s training portal for the concise notes, any time she chooses.
She adds: “The courses helped me understand the hospital environment very quickly. They prepared me for actual work very much better than my textbooks.
“It’s a great idea to mix the immediacy of lectures with e-learning. When revising, I can do assessments and revise lectures off the net anytime.”
Such experience as Dr Anwar’s vindicates NHG’s belief that e-learning bridges the critical and closely intertwined need for continuous staff training and providing excellent care for patients.
In the healthcare industry, e-learning is an idea that has truly come of age.
Globally, the industry races to keep abreast of new treatments, equipment, new illnesses and diseases, and cope with a growing patient load and rising patient expectations. These challenges compete for available staff time for training.
They compound another global issue – rising healthcare costs. The medical industry is hard pressed to keep costs down, squeezed as it is by the hippocratic ideal of giving the best possible care and the costs attendant on the use of modern equipment, techniques, medicines and hiring proficient staff.
But to stay ahead in the fight against illness and disease, medical staff must constantly upgrade themselves.
In comes e-learning. Convenience aside, the benefits are numerous.
Consistency in training:
Each learner undergoes the same course, ensuring consistency of delivery, hence to consistency in quality of patient care.
Lighten workload for doctors and nurse educators:
Freeing up time from teaching and tutorial duties mean doctors and nursing educators alike spend more time in the wards and clinics, treating patients and passing on valuable hands-on practical skills.
Acceptance among staff is strong:
Self directed or quick learners revise at their own time and pace. Those more comfortable learning with peers get protected time in the computer labs to do so together. As do staff who do not own computers or who have to share with family.
A Knowledge Portal:
The storage of e-learning material creates an electronic repository of hard won knowledge that is readily passed down from senior to new or junior doctors. It enables an organisation to build up its knowledge capital and knowledge management capability, thus building a valuable storehouse of information.
Teaching patients self-care:
Well-informed patients are our best healthcare partner. Potentially, the e-learning platform can be modified to provide patient education in a cost-effective and timely fashion, especially for patients with chronic conditions requiring long-term care. Such information can be continuously updated at a relatively low cost.
Rapid sharing and training in global emergencies:
The SARS episode in 2003 taught the global healthcare industry a valuable lesson in the rapid sharing of information and techniques to pre-empt, contain and control the spread of the deadly virus. As the world contemplates the horrors of a global flu pandemic and possible outbreaks of new, virulent diseases, being able to quickly share information and train healthcare professionals globally takes on utmost urgency. E-learning will be able to perform that role very well.
NHG’s e-learning strategy has three prongs:
- To provide a cost-effective, single e-platform for learning and leveraging knowledge;
- To develop an “organic” capability in course development which is more targeted, responsive and affordable than commercial solutions; and
- To create the mindset of e-learning as the preferred learning mode amongst stakeholders.
For e-learning strategies to work, the key is content. The desired strong e-learning mindset will build its own momentum once learners are enthused by the depth and applicability of content to their work or needs.
At NHG, the e-learning project team opted to develop courses in-house rather than outsourcing, tapping on a broad spectrum of experienced staff for practical knowledge and guidance to ensure a high degree of relevance.
It was a bold step, given the team’s relative lack of experience in developing e-learning courses. But the focus on getting the fundamentals right, and then gradually increasing the level of interactivity and sophistication, was the right move.
In devising each course, the ratio of lectures and e-learning practical to the area of study is critically assessed. By involving staff in course development, there was stronger acceptance. It also built up useful course development skills.
The approach also led to more courses being developed over a shorter time, helping to sustain momentum and interest.
Close to a year since the e-learning project began, some of the courses have already won industry recognition. For example, Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s e-learning course on Moderate Sedation won the most outstanding Human Resource Development Award at the Hospital Management Asia Conference in September.
For young doctors like Dr Anwar, the confidence boost from her e-learning courses proved valuable these last eight months in the hectic pace of hospital work. She is looking forward to moving to a Medical Officer’s position in four months, and the added responsibilities that come with it. And yes, she has handled dying patients – with calm.
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