Need-to-know information is constantly changing for healthcare professionals, and staffing challenges make taking time away from[1] patient care increasingly difficult.
Training often gets overlooked, which can lead to employee burnout, low staff morale, and ultimately poor outcomes.[2] Mobile training lets you build training into your business process so that your team can learn on their schedule.
As healthcare facilities already struggle to keep patient load down, training and development efforts can seem like the least of concerns, but smart investments in training pay real performance dividends. Below are three of the top issues facing training and development in healthcare and how mobile learning can help solve them.
Money
Training can be expensive. Traditional classroom training requires space, instructors, and often travel costs—not to mention the work hours missed to get there. Even online training can be expensive when you factor in pricey licenses or the time and energy to do it yourself.
Mobile learning, however, is delivered on the same mobile devices (cellphones, tablets, etc.) that 94% of U.S. adults between the ages of 18-49[3] already own. Creating a comprehensive mobile-learning application or including mobile-learning material to supplement other traditional or eLearning training can reduce training costs by up to 50 percent.
While mobile training can’t completely eliminate every issue facing training and staff development in healthcare, the benefits of mobile make it a must-have for top-performing organizations.
See also: How Leading Hospitals Are Using Mobile Apps for Training and Better Patient Care
Culture of Development
Today’s employee views on-the-job training as essential not only for performing their job successfully but also in establishing an environment that values their personal and career goals. A recent poll showed that just “one in five U.S. employees strongly agree their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.”[4] Managing physicians and hospital leaders must make training a priority—through attitude, budget, and example—to create a culture of development that encourages the entire staff to learn more, perform better, and work together towards the overall goal of patient care.
But creating that culture of development can be difficult. Different team members need training on different procedures, and even individual members within a team learn at different paces—not to mention the fact that balancing work with training and personal life is especially demanding.
Mobile training tools like Capillary can also offer personalized training courses complete with timely reminders to combat the forgetting curve. The convenience, mobility, and personalization of training combine to help make training easier to complete and more likely to be retained.
Time
One of the biggest obstacles to training and staff development is lack of time. Care teams are already overworked and understaffed. So finding the time and effort to complete extra training isn’t trivial.
That’s why establishing a culture of development is so important. By focusing on getting better as a team, employees are more likely to buy in to training programs and put in the effort required to learn.
But it’s also important to provide your team with the easiest and most convenient way to access that training. No one wants to finish a long shift just to sign in to their computer to complete a two-hour training course. Mobile training focuses on breaking up learning into small, digestible lessons (~2-10 minutes each) that are task-oriented. This type of learning, called microlearning, is designed to improve skills acquisition and is proven to increase motivation, engagement, and knowledge retention over traditional and online training.
See also: How to Create Great Microlearning Content
In addition to the lessons being shorter and easier to consume, mobile learning presents the opportunity to engage in training almost anywhere at any time. Instead of trying to work around everyone’s schedules or requiring employees to sit at a desktop and complete online training courses, learning can occur in “stolen moments”—e.g. during their commute or lunch break—any time they have a free moment and an internet connection.
A key outcome of mobile learning’s unique accessibility is just-in-time training—delivering key points of data at the point of need—which helps learning blend with practice and performance. Learners can cross-check facts, review training materials, or go over checklists.
Resources
[1] Woods, Bob. “America’s $103 Billion Home Health-Care System Is in Crisis as Worker Shortage Worsens.” CNBC, CNBC, 9 Apr. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/04/09/us-home-healthcare-system-is-in-crisis-as-worker-shortages-worsen.html.
[2] Gesme, Dean H, et al. “Essentials of Staff Development and Why You Should Care.” Journal of Oncology Practice, American Society of Clinical Oncology, Mar. 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835475/.
[3] “Demographics of Mobile Device Ownership and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 12 June 2019, www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/.
[4] Wigert, Ben. “Why Healthcare Leaders Should Build a Culture of Development.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 7 Aug. 2019, www.gallup.com/workplace/236129/why-healthcare-leaders-build-culture-development.aspx.
