Distance Education

This article suggests a strategy for addressing the difficulty in training enough health workers involving creating satellite sites of colleges that offer health worker training at district hospitals or other health worksites. [adapted from author]

The authors describe the development of a distance learning health education program for rural communities that developed a network of rural community learning centers to employ distance learning technologies for community-driven peer education in isolated areas of the Marshall Islands. [adapted from abstract]

This article reports on a pilot evaluation of distance education modalities was conducted among U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands healthcare workers. [from abstract]

This presentation outlines the successful School of Health Science’s Indira Gandhi National Open University program to democratise higher education; provide cost-effective, quality education to a large section of the population; provide higher education to developing countries; and become a pioneer in distance education for health managers and medical educators. [adapted from author]

This presentation outlines Management for Science’s Virtual Programs (such as health leadership development, strategic planning and human resources management), how they work and the results they have achieved. [adapted from author]

This presentation outlines FAIMER’s work to create an online network of health educators for collaboration and support to strengthen and expand leadership and management skills and education methods; and to stregthen the field of health education through distance courses. [adapted from author]

This presentation outlines a study to identify lessons learned which can guide and maximize the impact of distance education for health workers. [adapted from author]

This presentation outlines human resources for health context; post- qualification training priorities; training design for performance; and a conceptual framework for approaches to health worker training - particularly focusing on distance learning approaches and effectiveness. [adapted from author]

This study reviewed and assessed the Tanzania’s current distance learning programs for health care workers, as well as those in countries with similar human resource challenges, to determine the feasibility of distance learning to meet the need of an increased and more skilled health workforce. [adapted from abstract]

The authors designed and delivered a pilot postgraduate medical education program in the virtual world, Second Life to explore the potential of a virtual world for delivering continuing medical education (CME) designed for physicians; determine possible instructional designs using SL for CME; understand the limitations of SL for CME; understand the barriers, solutions, and costs associated with using SL, including required training; and measure participant learning outcomes and feedback. [adapted from abstract]

This article summarizes a project that tested whether mobile learning in combination with social media might provide a solution for the lack of training for health care workers scattered across the country. [adapted from author]

This article presents an innovative approach to healthcare worker (HCW) training using mobile phones as a personal learning environment. Twenty physicians used individual Smartphones in urban and peri-urban HIV/AIDS clinics in Peru, where almost 70% of the nations HIV patients in need of treatment. [adapted from abstract]

This study is a continuation of an earlier report that found online continuing medical education (CME) to be highly effective in making evidence-based decisions. [from abstract]

Information and communication technology can play a vital role in training healthcare professionals, across the board - in nursing schools, medical schools, urban settings, and even in rural areas where it is often needed the most, in remote hospitals, health centers and dispensaries that are under-staffed and where the addressable population is scattered. [from author]

The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative evaluation of two internet-based continuing medical education delivery formats and the effect on satisfaction, knowledge and confidence outcomes. [from abstract]

This article aims to produce theory driven criteria to guide the development and evaluation of internet-based medical courses. [from abstract]

This document chronicles the evolution of e-learning among nurses in Kenya. It charts the obstacles - a shortage of qualified tutors, the scarcity of clinical placements - and the priorities to overcome them. [adapted from author]

Poor public health indicators in Tanzania have led to the upgrading of nursing and clinical personnel who currently have just core training. This article reports on a project to assist the upgrade of clinical officers working around sexually transmissible infections within the context of healthcare, education and policy developments in Tanzania. [adapted from abstract]

The Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning Wiki provides materials to enhance surgical care in urban and rural environments, using various forms of the modern but low-cost technology now available, presented in a workshop/discussion/lecture format. [adapted from introduction]

This article describes the Public Health Resource Network, an innovative distance-learning course in training, motivating, empowering and building a network of health personnel from government and civil society groups. Its aim is to build human resource capacity for strengthening decentralized health planning, especially at the district level. [from abstract]

The shortages of teaching faculty and insufficient learning resources have hampered the traditionally intensive surgical training apprenticeships. To address this, Muhimbili University attempted to enhance technical skills in general surgery and emergency procedures for senior medical students by implementing a surgical skills practicum using locally developed simulation models. This article evaluates the effectiveness of the program. [adpated from abstract]

This article documents the key stages of a project to develop and implement an online resource for facilitating local implementation and delivery of a program to provide improved access to mental health care. The article also reports on the use of this resource 12 months after its launch. [adapted from abstract]

This paper describes the results of a study comparing the effectiveness of web-based and face-to-face continuing education methods in improving nurses' knowledge about AIDS. [adapted from abstract]

Standardizing the experiences of medical students in a community preceptorship where clinical sites vary by geography and discipline can be challenging. Computer-assisted learning is prevalent in medical education and can help standardize experiences, but often is not used to its fullest advantage. A blended learning curriculum combining web-based modules with face-to-face learning can ensure students obtain core curricular principles. [from abstract]

Taking advantage of societal trends involving the “third sector”, a social model of philanthropy and the open-source software and educational resource movements, provides the opportunity for online education for capacity building at low cost. The Peoples Open Access Education Initiative, Peoples-uni, aims to help build public health capacity in this way, and this paper describes its evolution. [from abstract]

Regional Australia is critically short of registered nurses (RNs) due to an ageing nursing workforce and difficulty in attracting new staff. It is recognised that rural background is the most influential factor shaping a health professional’s decision to practise in regional areas. Because of this, Charles Sturt University offered a bachelor of nursing by distance education (DE), enabling rural and remote enrolled nurses (ENs)to upgrade their qualifications to RN. However, despite the flexible study mode offered, many rural and remote ENs were reluctant to progress to university study.

The paper seeks to analyze the import of distance education for promotion of proficiency skills in the health sector and review ongoing professional development programmes for health workers in Ghana, and come out with strategies to offer training avenues leading to the professional growth of the individuals and economic growth of the country. [from abstract]

This report evaluates the educational effects of a clinically integrated e-learning course for teaching basic evidence-based medicine among postgraduates compared to a traditional lecture-based course of equivalent content. [adapted from abstract]

The human resources crisis in Africa is especially acute in the public health field. This paper describes the innovative aspects of the distance education program at the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Strategies are proposed for scaling up such a program to meet the growing need in this essential area of health human resource capacity development in Africa. [adapted from abstract]

Strong leadership and management skills are crucial to finding solutions to the human resource crisis in health. Health professionals and human resource (HR) managers worldwide who are in charge of addressing HR challenges in health systems often lack formal education in leadership and management. The Virtual Leadership Development Program is a web-based leadership development program that combines face-to-face and distance learning methodologies to strengthen the capacity of teams to identify and address health challenges and produce results. [adapted from abstract]