If you’ve ever visited a healthcare providing facility, be it a hospital, laboratory, clinic or physician’s practice, you’ll appreciate how busy the professionals working there are. Long shifts and extremely stressful assignments make it difficult, if not impossible, to do anything else other than the “normal” routines of life – eat, sleep…and work!

So, in the interest of delivering the best healthcare possible to patients, how then can facility administrators, HR managers and training providers ensure these professionals are continually trained and equipped with the latest knowledge?

The answer is Microlearning!

How Microlearning Can Make a Difference

At a very high-level, microlearning is a training approach that seeks to deliver highly focused learning, to a targeted audience, in as short a time as possible. Unlike days-long training courses, or multi-hour virtual learning, microlearning takes place in a matter of minutes but happens without compromising learning outcomes.

Given that healthcare professionals are often squeezed for time, here are 4 ways microlearning can make a difference in healthcare training:

  • Expediting Learning and Investment Outcomes

As highlighted in the introduction to this post, one of the biggest challenges to healthcare training is time. By helping to compress healthcare training time, without compromising learning objectives, microlearning can deliver better learning outcomes.

The use of microlearning doesn’t just help healthcare practitioners become better providers – faster, but it also aids in delivering healthcare providing institutions and practices better return on their training investment (ROI). The quicker that front-line providers can be trained, the faster they become productive in the organization, and that leads to better patient outcomes for the institution.

  • Making Looking and Learning a Reality

It’s great to be able to view lively PowerPoint presentations with striking transition effects. Healthcare professionals may even benefit from high-def 3D images and charts. However, the power of using interactive learning tools, as part of a Microlearning module, can make the most of limited-time learning. It’s so much easier to look and learn in small chunks than to have to sit through a lengthy live or online training presentation.

At the end of a tiresome shift, many busy (and often overworked!) healthcare providers might not have the motivation to interact with their learning content. Microlearning has a solution for that too. By integrating short segments of video learning aids, such as Grant’s Dissection Videos, trainers can also accelerate information absorption while dramatically reducing the length of training time needed.

  • Encouraging Learning by Doing

Like many applied sciences, healthcare is something that’s best learned by applying theory to practice, and by repeatedly doing what was learned. Unfortunately, the nature of medical practice is such that you can’t “do” what you’ve learned on live patients in the hope that you’ll get it right!

Additionally, in a traditional learning environment, healthcare case studies are dissected over several days (modules) in order to deliver specific real-life learning outcomes. While this approach might be ideal for interns or entry-level healthcare roles, it might not be the most optimal strategy for busy in-practice professionals. Microlearning has a solution.

By using virtual scenarios, microlearning modules can be used to deliver short and targeted learning to healthcare providers in specific domains. For instance, if a clinician must practice his/her health assessment skills, then focused microlearning modules can quickly help learners do just that and deliver the necessary knowledge and skills needed, without the practitioner having to serially go through (unrequired) pre-requisites.

By integrating such tools and content, trainers can personalize the use cases to fit real-life situations most prevalent in an institution or medical practice. Learners can then step into those roles and demonstrate how they might perform or react under similar sets of circumstances.

  • Enabling Practicing When/Where Convenient

Frequent refresher quizzes and practice drills are a proven method of knowledge retention. Microlearning can be made effective by providing busy healthcare staff the tools to refresh their learning whenever convenient for them. One way that this is possible is through the use of interactive Flash Cards and other tools that physicians and nurses can launch during shift or meal breaks.

Because of their small footprint (compressed formats, smaller byte counts), most microlearning content is optimized for mobile-first learning. This means that healthcare professionals can easily download and consume learning at a time that’s optimal for them – for instance, while a physician waits in the examination room for intake processing of his/her next patient to be completed.

Making Microlearning Work

There’s no doubt that these four significant characteristics of microlearning can truly make a difference in how healthcare training is delivered. So, what types of content could instructional designers leverage to make microlearning a success? Here are a few examples:

  • TED Talks: Healthcare-related TED-Ed type video content makes for ideal inclusion in microlearning courses
  • Podcasts: Healthcare microlearning content doesn’t necessarily have to emanate from healthcare professionals. Some healthcare topics, such as cybersecurity and its impact on patient experiences, are best learned through podcasts delivered by non-healthcare experts
  • Contextual learning: Situational learning content is also an important component of microlearning. When developing contextual learning content, keep the GRASPS mnemonic in mind: Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Products and Standards
  • Personalized workflow training: Integrate content that fits into a healthcare providers’ unique daily workflow. For instance, rather than training an ER nurse practitioner on general patient registration practices, a more focused, but short, session on specific patient intake protocols (e.g. gunshots, auto accidents, workplace mishaps) makes for a more effective microlearning module
  • Notifications and reminders: Sending out “push learning” notification, such as brief Coles Notes-type summary advisories or links to microblogs about important developments (new contagious disease screening SOPs, latest healthcare regulatory mandates) can serve as useful microlearning content
  • Webcasts: Live or pre-recorded Webcasts, from regulatory bodies or professional associations, can be a vital component of any microlearning training program.

However, making microlearning work isn’t as simple as prescribing a set of micro-modules and compelling learners to consume them. To make microlearning work, you must:

  • Know the learning needs and shortcomings of your healthcare professionals
  • Identify specific learning objectives for every learner. For example, if they lack in health care assessment skills or patient communication, then focus on microlearning modules for those precise objectives
  • Endeavor to compress your learning content. The golden rule is to keep each piece of learning no more than twelve to fifteen minutes long. While this might seem ultra-short, getting busy healthcare providers to provide even that much of undivided attention can sometimes be a challenge
  • Offer content that goes straight to the heart of the learning objectives, with minimal time spent on introductions
  • Provide optional additional resources. For instance, while a fifteen-minute patient communications module might go directly into the key elements of communication (patience, listening, hearing, empathy, eye contact, etc.), external links can be offered to interested learners to explore the psychology of communication

Finally, personalization of healthcare microlearning content holds the key to its effectiveness. Personalization must be done at two levels: At the learner level, which considers healthcare practitioners skills, training, and prior experience when developing or recommending micro-courses.

Additionally, personalization must be implemented in terms of the environment in which microlearning takes place. For instance, a nurse practitioner who works in a general practitioners’ (GPs) clinic might not benefit much from a micro-course on patient intake and triage procedures at an ultra-busy hospital emergency room (ER). The microlearning simulations, scenarios, and roles discussed for each of these environments will have different learning objectives and outcomes.