Our world of healthcare is in big trouble – growing at a pace that doesn’t allow for professional staff to keep up with the changes, and for organizations and institutions to hire and train as quickly as staff is needed. Media is transforming professional education in ways that were unimaginable five years ago – increasing access to all demographics – in particular, for healthcare workers. And not just doctors.
In order to increase access to quality healthcare education and pave the way for a new generation healthcare workers – CreatorUp worked with Straightaway Healthcare to make a 64 episode lesson series that is Netflix level entertaining, while educating the next generation of Certified Nursing Assistants around what it’s like to be a Certified Nursing Assistant. The outcome of the series improves onboarding and retention of newly trained staff.
CreatorUp also worked with West Coast University to create an interactive VR scenario where nurses see first hand what it’s like to be in the middle of a “Do Not Resuscitate” situation – where family members are making demands that conflict with the patient’s will. Nursing students are invited to interact with the VR scenario by making choices that the nurse would make – so they feel the pressure of the moment, in a simulated situation.
While videos and VR have limitations to what they can achieve – they also have a unique power to do some things well. In these two cases – they help nurses and certified nursing assistants learn about the types of skills they will need to cultivate that they may not be able to read about in a textbook – but instead, must experience.
Beyond soft skills training – technical skills are also often best taught through simulation: Surgeons are constantly needing to refresh and retrain; they may make drug related errors up to 50% of the time – but imagine if a VR training scenario could help prevent those issues, along with all types of other misdiagnoses.
The future of efficient and effective healthcare training involves video and VR. What ideas do you have to share about how we can improve the future of healthcare with digital media?
