Three Use Instances for Microlearning in Healthcare

Ongoing studying and improvement (L&D) is crucial for healthcare workers. The business is evolving quick; rules are continuously altering, new know-how is being requested by sufferers, and healthcare organizations are going through new threats like cyberattacks.

Whereas preserving healthcare employees keep up-to-date via steady studying is vital, discovering time for that studying isn’t really easy. The healthcare staffing scarcity signifies that many organizations are working with fewer employees members, and people staffers report being overworked and confused.

Even with no staffing scarcity, it’s onerous to seek out time to coach. Healthcare staff are targeted on affected person care, deal with well being crises often, and should not have the time for an extended coaching module, or perhaps a medium-sized one.

Microlearning and just-in-time studying are two approaches to studying that benefit from busy learners’ time, delivering bite-sized chunks of knowledge once they want it. Maintain studying for examples of how microlearning can be utilized in a healthcare setting.

However first: what’s microlearning?

Microlearning serves content material to learners briefly, targeted, and simply digestible chunks. Microlearning makes use of movies, quizzes, infographics, and different mediums to ship studying that’s hyper-focused on a single studying goal. Performed nicely, microlearning is an efficient strategy to increase learners’ retention of latest info whereas maximizing their time. As a result of microlearning will get content material to learners quick, it’s a superb strategy to ship just-in-time studying.

Simply-in-time studying will get information to a learner precisely once they want it. It’s one thing we do in our on a regular basis lives on a regular basis. If you have to be taught a talent at dwelling, likelihood is you discover movies on TikTok or YouTube that present you how you can repair one thing or make one thing. Simply–in-time studying applies our “Google it” tradition to office studying, giving learners the ability to entry coaching once they want it, and making a tradition of steady studying.

Whereas microlearning will not be applicable for each matter (complicated studying targets could also be extra successfully addressed via extra conventional types of studying), brief bursts of content material may help time-poor healthcare professionals select once they need to be taught.

How may that look? Under are some examples of how microlearning could be utilized in a healthcare group.

Use instances for microlearning in healthcare

When new know-how is launched

Sufferers are used to a sure stage of buyer expertise. They will make reservations on-line, for instance, or use chatbots to ask easy questions of shops. They need the identical capabilities from their healthcare suppliers. Though many healthcare organizations have embraced telehealth, different on-line capabilities,like affected person self-scheduling, are new to scientific suppliers.

Employees members have to be taught the options and functionalities of those new instruments. Relatively than overwhelming employees with an extended studying module, microlearning can ship studying via transient, focused modules or interactive tutorials that workers can entry proper earlier than they begin utilizing a brand new system, and even whereas they’re utilizing it. A safe AI-powered studying assistant may additionally assist busy healthcare professionals by giving them the chance to ask for a fast abstract of their module, to resolve an issue or take a brand new motion on the job. Options like these be sure that employees have probably the most related info at their fingertips when they should use new programs, and should act as a refresher if they’ll’t keep in mind how you can use a brand new software.

Throughout a disaster

Whereas your group possible has a catastrophe response plan, protocols typically change throughout a disaster. For instance, throughout a illness outbreak, healthcare staff want fast updates on new an infection management protocols. Moreover, employees might have refreshers on present catastrophe response protocols.

Simply-in-time coaching will be supplied via on-line programs, cell apps, AI-powered chatbots, or on-the-spot briefings that equip employees with the information and abilities to deal with the emergency successfully. This may embrace coaching on the usage of private protecting tools (PPE), and affected person triage.

When rules change

Laws are continuously being up to date. To stay in compliance, healthcare teams have to be sure that all affected workers learn about any adjustments as quickly as doable. L&D can use just-in-time coaching to shortly push out content material about updates or new rules to learners.

Microlearning modules may also assist healthcare organizations perceive which employees have seen, handed, and accomplished the required coaching; utilizing analytics, L&D groups can view completion charges and evaluation scores for modules on new rules, and establish which employees haven’t accomplished their assigned studying.

Practice healthcare staff with out overwhelming them

Healthcare staff don’t get a lot downtime, and it’s been worse in the previous few years.

A current ATD survey of healthcare professionals discovered that 75% of respondents have been not less than reasonably affected by the healthcare staffing scarcity, however the actual pressure has been on the employees themselves. In 2022, 266,900 healthcare staff mentioned they had been working time beyond regulation. The examine characterised these staff as “previous the purpose of exhaustion” and indicated that many nurses had been burned out and contemplating leaving healthcare altogether.

Healthcare staff don’t want extra piled on their plate, however studying is vital to sustaining top quality affected person care. Litmos’ Chief Studying Officer advises L&D groups to make studying straightforward for workers by making certain that their coaching supplies are straightforward to seek out, responsive, accessible, customized and simple to digest. Making microlearning modules broadly accessible will be an effective way to start out, serving to learners get the coaching they want with out asking them to seek out extra time of their already-busy days.