Business: Medical/Health Care Training
Location: Leicester, UK
Virtual Pedagogue and Course Source* win 2006 UK
National Training Award for Pioneering Blood Transfusion Training.
The Company
Laurence Wilson, principal of Virtual Pedagogue, an e-Learning training company, is also the chairman of the Hospital Liaison Committee of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Leicester, UK. As the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faith forbids acceptance of donor blood transfusions, Laurence was especially interested to promote information concerning transfusion alternatives. Laurence took responsibility for devising the pilot training course so that medical staff at five hospitals in the Trent and Leicester area of the UK could learn about an alternative to donor blood transfusion called Intra Operative Cell Salvage (ICS).
The Challenge
With increasing restrictions imposed upon volunteer blood donors in the interest of blood safety and the public more aware of issues in receiving a blood transfusion, clinicians and patients are interested in exploring viable alternatives to conventional allogeneic or donor blood transfusions. Intra-operative Cell Salvage (ICS) recycles a patient’s own blood for use during operations, avoiding the need for a transfusion. The goal of this program was to raise awareness of ICS, roll out training, and ultimately create a best practice blueprint to train potentially thousands of hospital staff within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
"The challenge is how to train large numbers of healthcare staff without pulling hospital staff off the floor or compromising operating room schedules. e-Learning turned out to be an excellent solution." Wilson explained, “I know how to move classroom training to the web. I worked with hospital anesthesiologists to develop a series of courses that medical staff can take when their schedule allows. We partnered with Course-Source to provide the technology to put the courses online, building a Learning Management System around it – vital for administration, tracking and reporting purposes. We used these online courses to prepare medical staff for a classroom session where they receive practical experience; they then practiced on a dummy in a simulation center; finally they had supervised, hands on session in the operating room before receiving a certificate.”
The ReadyGo Solution
Wilson explains, “A blended learning approach really saved time, cut costs, and allowed us to train more medical staff. The UK National Training Awards organization was very impressed with our effective e-Learning course design and our ability to understand where and when to use e-Learning and classroom training.” Virtual Pedagogue had already used ReadyGo WCB to develop e-Learning courses; the ReadyGo WCB made it easy to move medical training to the web. “With ReadyGo WCB I just use a simple pull down menu to integrate my course with the LMS of my choice.” states Wilson. After the successful pilot the UK’s National Blood Service (NBS) has now rolled out this program across the country. Meanwhile, the hospitals are considering using ReadyGo SST to register students and save student test scores. Willson is quick to mention “ReadyGo is very flexible; I can quickly choose the LMS of my choice and regenerate my course. This way we don’t have to stop training when we move LMS’s.”
###
ReadyGo and ReadyGo Web Course Builder are trademarks of ReadyGo, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
###
*Course-Source is a multi-award winning e-learning service provider; solutions include an online Learning Management System and a wide range of e-Learning training content. When this project began, Course-Source was already providing e-learning to an existing 180,000 users within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
