3 Major Challenges With Training in Healthcare (and How Collaborative Learning Can Help)

As L&D professionals, it’s your job to provide accurate and timely training in healthcare. But, that’s easier said than done when you’re faced with ever-changing state and federal regulations, the adoption of new technology, evolving healthcare crises, and insurance policies that update each year.

The healthcare industry is fast-paced and always in flux, meaning your team has little time to rest. There’s a reason 75% percent of healthcare workers face mental health struggles like burnout, stress, and anxiety. The complex nature of healthcare makes training in healthcare especially tough. Specifically, inaccurate or dated information can result in a poor patient experience, longer workdays, and unnecessary stress. In other words, training in healthcare is a challenge.

Collaborative Learning is an educational methodology that opens the content creation process to your entire team. This allows you to pull knowledge from everyone—not just L&D—and ultimately create training and courses faster than traditional learning methods allow. It's about working smarter, not harder. In other words, Collaborative Learning makes it possible for you to keep up with those ever-changing regulations, new tech, evolving healthcare crises, and insurance policies.

The goal is to spend less time on training while learning more relevant things, which is possible through collaboration and a couple of tools, like a Collaborative Learning management system (LMS). Let's take a closer look.

Related: What are Learning Management Systems, and How do you Choose One?

1. Healthcare employees are strapped for time

It’s no secret that healthcare specialists are busy. Nurses are so busy they’ve drawn the attention of entire studies. The last thing you want is to waste a healthcare worker’s time with unnecessary tasks that aren’t helping other workers or patients. Effective training your team can access at their convenience cuts back on time wasted, while giving your team the direction they need.

As we mentioned earlier, Collaborative Learning results in faster course creation, meaning you and the rest of the L&D team can save time. Collaborative Learning also lends itself to microlearning courses, which cover specific topics like changes in billing, how to use a new piece of office equipment, or healthcare recruitment strategies, which saves your healthcare workers’ time. Coupled with a self-guided learning model, these microlearning courses are also perfect for learning at the point of need. This means your team can get information right when they need it.

You and the rest of the L&D team have the colossal task of meeting healthcare training needs on your own. Every time your team needs a new training, you have to either work with an instructional designer or create or update the course yourself. This could take 130 hours per hour of eLearning.

When you’re utilizing Collaborative Learning, complete with a collaborative LMS, you’re able to essentially crowdsource training in healthcare from everyone in your company. This frees you up to monitor and manage training, collect feedback, and ultimately ensure content isn’t an unnecessary burden on your healthcare specialists.

To take the first steps toward implementing Collaborative Learning, download our ebook on Collaborative Learning: we discuss the high engagement rates made possible by this powerful learning method, the importance of a collaborative LMS, and offer tips on getting started.

2. Healthcare employers struggle with engagement and retention

A happy employee is an employee with little reason to leave an organization. Unfortunately, burnout and stress are prevalent in healthcare. Remember: 75% percent of healthcare workers are overwhelmed and struggling. And this isn’t new, either. Reports show healthcare workers were overworked, stressed out, and had a poor work-life balance in years past, too.

The good news is, 70% of workers would consider leaving their employer for one that invests in employee advancement and training. That means, if you’re willing to invest in employee advancement and training, you can snatch up this top talent.

Many workers are currently looking for opportunities to gain skills, level up, and be more confident in their positions. For Gen Z, a generation that’s either in or currently entering the workforce, it’s essential that a company offer training relevant to their position—83% of Gen Z want more training that helps them do their job better.

But, while workers want relevant training and room for growth, the presentation of that training is crucial. Healthcare workers are swamped with work and stressed—the last thing they need is an hour-long seminar that doesn’t fit their schedule, and worse, doesn’t deliver learning when they need it.

The right collaborative approach respects your team’s time and delivers that relevant training experience workers want. When using a collaborative LMS, like 360Learning, your team can identify a Learning Need, like wanting to master a new piece of software or become more efficient at a certain task. That Learning Need can in turn be met through a course created by a knowledgeable teammate that has a solution.

Collaborative Learning also results in a higher engagement rate when compared to dated training methods. Collaborative Learning involves working together to create and learn, meaning there’s a social learning aspect involved. This plays a role in engagement, as does the increased ownership that comes with helping create learning materials for other teammates.

3. Training in healthcare needs to keep up with changing policies and crises

Training in healthcare is often on complex and demanding subject matter: changing policies, developments in health crises, or new technology. Collaborative Learning makes it efficient for experts on any given topic to dive in and create training, making it more likely the training effectively covers these complex topics.

In 2020, when COVID-19 took the healthcare world by storm, providers scrambled to provide telehealth services. Where physicians spent years providing healthcare in person, they now had to figure out how to provide a thorough, safe experience via video calls. There was also the matter of risk management, as some patients still required in-person visits. Beyond colossal efforts from IT departments, this move to telehealth required training for countless healthcare workers. And the training had to be delivered quickly.

In a non-collaborative model, you and your L&D team need to speak with specialists, pull information, build the course, then make sure the course is accurate by running it past the specialist again. This results in a lot of back and forth, and more importantly, time wasted. This also makes the process of revamping a course with new information time-consuming as well. And without a cloud-based collaborative LMS, your team would have to manually set up the course at every office location, rather than upload it and make it live.

Collaborative Learning allows you to streamline the course creation process regardless of the topic, even during a rapidly evolving healthcare crisis. If insurance policies update or you switch to a new insurtech product, an insurance specialist or HR rep knowledgeable on the topic can create the course in your collaborative LMS. When there’s a new piece of tech or software to use, IT can create the course.

And again, in the event of a shifting health crisis, healthcare workers from any of your locations can share what they’ve learned via courses, ensuring everyone is as safe as possible. Couple all of this with off-the-shelf information and you’re left with courses that are as up-to-date as possible.

Finding Collaborative Learning success with a collaborative LMS

Collaborative Learning will help your organization learn and grow in meaningful ways, together as a team. With a truly collaborative LMS in your toolbelt, you’ll be able to completely democratize the learning process and empower your team with the tools they need to make powerful courses.

360Learning offers a fully collaborative LMS experience, making it possible for your team to create courses as a team, identify Learning Needs, rate and review courses, and iterate on existing content. Sign up for a free demo of 360Learning and see how a collaborative LMS can help your company completely embrace the Collaborative Learning model and revolutionize training in healthcare.