Focus Magazine - Fall 2012 - 35

MEDICAL&DIAGNOSTICDEVICES

Moving High-Stakes Training Out of the Classroom
I By Tom Godfrey eing a pacemaker rep is no easy job. ese reps must be able to sell devices, and thus articulate, in the language of an electrophysiologist, the features, bene ts and clinical research associated with those devices. ey also support physicians in the operating room during procedures, which requires thorough understanding of cardiac anatomy and physiology, interpersonal skills for working with doctors and patients, and, most importantly, the knowledge to program devices to each individual patient’s needs. (Each device has 30 to 40 programmable parameters and each parameter has multiple settings making for endless combinations to meet patient needs.) A poorly trained rep can truly mean the di erence between life and death. Because of this job complexity, and the real need to con rm that the speci c rep has the required skills before he or she sets foot in a hospital or clinic, it is common for rep training to be heavily geared to an in-person, instructor-led format. However, with increasingly limited training budgets, and a globally dispersed workforce, the logistics and costs associated with bringing trainees in-house can become staggering. So here is the question: When the stakes are this high, can online learning help provide the complex knowledge and skills your employees need? It can and should, but moving training online

and doing it e ectively is not easy. It is not as simple as layering some audio over your PowerPoints and putting them on your Web site – sadly an approach many organizations take when they move instructor-led training online. Converting a portion of your instructor-led to self-paced learning is de nitely a large part of an e ective solution, but when you bundle your self-paced learning with online meeting technologies, online discussion forums, le sharing tools and social media tools, you can deliver a more engaging learning experience, allow for collaborative learning and o er a chance for your training experts to connect at a distance with trainees – giving you better peace of mind that your trainees have acquired the knowledge and skills they need. An e ective strategy for our pacemaker reps, for example, may involve using self-paced training to teach the more didactic content (such as anatomy and physiology), use synchronous meeting tools to role-play sales and service interactions, leverage social tools for clinical case observations and to keep the trainees

connected to your in-house experts, and simulation so ware to practice device con guration and troubleshooting. Ultimately, an e ective learning strategy requires an all-of-the-above approach. In-class learning may remain a critical component, but moving as much as possible online while still maintaining quality can reduce reliance on the classroom, as well as the logistical challenges it creates. Leveraging a variety of technologies and instructional strategies to enable more avenues for engagement allows you to move more of your training online, even when the content is complex and the stakes are high. I

For more information, scan/capture the QR code with your smartphone.

Tom Godfrey is an instructional architect with the Industry Solutions Group at Capella Education Company. Email Tom at Tom.Godfrey@Capella.edu.

FOCUS | FALL 2012 | www.spbt.org

http://www.spbt.org

Focus Magazine - Fall 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Focus Magazine - Fall 2012