Area9 Lyceum Blog

The world is on the brink of a 4th industrial revolution that will build upon the 3rd — the digital revolution — and which will be characterized by rapid technological change and automation. The shift toward automation, already occurring, is projected to have far-reaching consequences for every sphere of life, including, of course, employment.

On the surface it appears to be an easy win: tapping into the knowledge and expertise that exists within a company through user-generated content. Short how-to instructional videos can be cheaply and easily made and uploaded by experts across the company, then be searchable and accessible by every employee.

In the universal set “healthcare training,” there are many subsets. Professional healthcare subgroups requiring specialized training include:

It is not a matter of if, but when: technological change and increased automation will disrupt more than 25% of jobs in the future in Canada, for example. Businesses not prepared to adapt will be left behind.

The best healthcare employee training should do more than identify your employees’ strengths and target their weak areas. It should diagnose and treat unconscious incompetence — what healthcare employees don’t know they don’t know. 

How confident are you that your end users are choosing the appropriate treatments for their patients as knowledgeably and as responsibly as they can? If your answer is anywhere along the spectrum of “I’m not sure” to “I’m reasonably confident,” then there’s work to be done. 

Simulation training is indispensable in healthcare because it’s a safe space for learning: there are no life-or-death consequences attached to mistakes in the world of simulated medical emergencies. But simulation training by itself isn’t adequate to keep employees up-to-date in their medical knowledge and skills — you need additional learning tools and an effective training program to optimize your training impact and meet the evolving needs of training for healthcare systems today.

Should pharmaceutical companies care about external training, i.e., training physician end users to use their products effectively and safely while optimizing patient care? The answer is obvious: of course they should. Effective external training means better use of your products and more optimal patient care — and better business outcomes for your company. 

Healthcare professionals in the NEJM Group, AACC and Coloplast, among others, turned to Adaptive Learning to optimize their training impact.  

Imagine this hypothetical situation: if you had to choose between two heart surgeons, both of whom had passed their Board exams, but one had achieved the minimum passing score and the other had scored 99%, which one would you choose? 

Healthcare professionals all have the same goals: do what’s best for the patient and optimize patient care. But globally, iatrogenesis — the unintended adverse effects of medical intervention on patients — is a problem. So how do healthcare professionals produce better outcomes — and reduce iatrogenic effects — across the board? 

Microlearning is an e-learning approach that breaks lessons into smaller chunks in order to make the training feel more manageable. Because of this, microlearning may seem like an attractive choice for an e-learning training solution for healthcare staff working under time pressure.