How we handle and manage medical training has always been imperative to the successful nurturing of next-generation healthcare professionals. However, as healthcare shortages continue to ravage the medical community, finding the best ways to fill the shoes of our most trusted professionals is only becoming an ever-more pressing priority.
Recent healthcare challenges like the need for remote appointments, in particular, have highlighted the fact that healthcare training needs to offer a more responsive, future-focused approach. Technology, and its wide-ranging use within medical training programs, plays an imperative role in making that possible. Unfortunately, the long-standing presence of often outdated training courses and focuses prevents those benefits from being felt in many instances.
In fact, as we enter an age where technology is more imperative to medical successes than ever before, it’s quickly becoming clear that inadequate manual training focuses are a large contributor to skills shortages in the first place. Changes must therefore not only be made but implemented fast to avoid an escalating shortage that’s impossible to come back from.
For healthcare providers, achieving this goal ultimately means managing medical training with the following tech-led focuses in mind.
# 1 – Digitized course management
Regardless of the lessons covered by medical training or the formats that they take, the manual management of students and their outcomes inevitably slows progress, and most worryingly pose a risk for performance weaknesses or strengths that remain unidentified. This has long been the case and has largely facilitated moves to computer-based training databases that make it easier to manage results overall. However, as the need for real-time results oversight and more efficient training generally makes itself known, medical educators need to make sure that their systems are also advancing.
In large part, this requires a shift toward digitized course management systems that factor for everything from written examinations to the use of online training courses (as we’ll discuss a little later). Cloud-based solutions that enable the simplified sharing of information throughout training focuses like simulation in healthcare and exam results are particularly becoming essential. The automation of things like data inputs, course scoring systems, and beyond is also significantly helping to improve outcomes using complete student transparency, and oversight of progress from the start of a course right through to qualification.
# 2 – ELearning courses
As well as limiting the efficiency of education based on individual learning styles, restrictive in-person medical training courses/classes can be a costly, time-consuming solution in a fast-paced healthcare environment. Furthermore, training like this does very little to prepare the healthcare providers of the future with a realistic understanding of the role and expectations that they’re preparing to fill.
It’s for this reason that the eLearning courses that have increased significantly in popularity across sectors since the start of the pandemic are also proving essential to medical training. The value and accessibility of eLearning is especially prevalent for existing healthcare workers looking to stay on top of current trends, but who work long hours that make such refresher courses difficult to manage in person. According to a report by the World Health Organization, the vast array of features within well-chosen healthcare eLearning platforms that can be accessed on mobile phones, etc. alongside real-world experience can also enhance the efficiency of training and thus reduce the time required for each lesson. In an age where healthcare organizations continually face cost compromises, the affordability of eLearning compared to its physical training counterparts is also providing this educational alternative with a tempting and satisfyingly applicable selling point that all course providers must consider.
# 3 – A specific focus on telemedicine
Traditional forms of medical training which focus solely on in-person patient care are increasingly resulting in limited career potential for future healthcare workers who will inevitably be operating in high-tech environments. This is why eLearning courses that refresh students and established providers in mind of the latest equipment-based advances, etc. are becoming so imperative to success. However, with telemedicine experiencing around a 154% increase in usage since the pandemic alone, the successful training of future healthcare workers is also reliant on an effective telemedicine focus across all career levels.
In particular, telemedicine modules should be introduced to standard training focuses in mind of ensuring that students can effectively manage patient-doctor relationships even across distances, and also that each future provider is aware of privacy laws with regard to this advance. On a job-specific level, educators may also find it beneficial to provide dedicated software training which provides in-depth information about the effective handling of things like telemedicine patient schedules, volume controls, and even video quality where necessary.
# 4 – The introduction of virtual reality
As mentioned, poor preparation for real-life medical environments is one of the most significant limitations of classroom-based medical training, resulting in ill-prepared students who are far more likely to either turn away from their positions or leave training before receiving qualifications. This is the worst outcome during an existing shortage and is best overcome by adequate training focuses which, as well as providing real-world experience where possible, utilize tools like virtual reality from even the starting stages of training.
Virtual reality’s value as a medical training tool particularly came into its own during the pandemic, when face-to-face simulations weren’t a possibility. Even now, however, healthcare facilities across the UK, US, and Canada stand to benefit from the implementation of VR-led animations throughout training courses. Things like virtually simulated operating rooms, virtual patients, and simulated environments particularly provide an affordable, accessible way for even students at the start of training to practice and develop real-world skills that can easily be assessed and overseen for in-the-moment feedback.
# 5 – Social media surgeries
Even with the help of virtual reality training and in-person simulations, many medical students are left unprepared for real-world treatments and the pressures that can come with them. This can lead to longer training lead times, higher student turnovers, and the risk of inefficiency even after qualifications have been achieved. This is especially true for surgeons, who often have to work in physically grueling conditions alongside limitations like unexpected surgical complications, excessive bleeding, and so on.
While they have been met with some controversy, social media surgeries which involve the live streaming of authentic surgeries as they happen, pose an increasingly viable solution to this problem. Examples like the real-time Snapchat hernia operation that received more than two million views have certainly shown the value of the inside knowledge that this advancement can provide. While some issues such as patient confidentiality do need addressing before this is a widely used technique, it’s therefore impossible to deny that social media surgeries can significantly speed up more efficient, preparation-based medical training when done right.
# 6 – Preparation for a big data age
Logically, medical training has always been most concerned with the science behind the role, focusing on things like an advanced understanding of wide-ranging conditions, and the ability to work with and recommend cutting-edge treatments. However, as the use of telemedicine and AI in healthcare continues to grow, there’s an increasing belief that training here will remain inefficient if it doesn’t also address things like medical operations within data-rich environments.
An understanding of data security, and also analysis that ensures available patient information is always compared alongside historical cases, case studies, etc. certainly looks set to herald a new, more informed age of healthcare providers. Refreshing educational standards with AI in mind can also better prepare an age of medical professionals who are likely to need to talk their patients through AI-led treatment courses, appointments, and more, making AI competence a crucial training focus, rather than another training afterthought.
Is the future of medical training upon us?
With worldwide shortages to the tune of 15 million expected across the healthcare sector by as early as 2030, perfecting fast, effective medical training has never been a more pressing concern. While traditional training techniques do continue to hold their own, success here that moves as quickly as the industry requires is increasingly coming down to the effective implementation of game-changing technology that makes this possible.
As well as effectively providing all medical students with a far better understanding of current and future medical settings in advance of placement, technologies reduce the need for long-winded and often inefficient in-person training courses. This frees significant healthcare funds for the ongoing hiring of high-quality future generations, as well as ensuring training that’s fast enough to provide the expertise necessary to fill roles as they become available.
While teething problems including concerns over patient confidentiality and system efficiency do continue to pose some setbacks, these advancements have certainly heralded a new age of medical training efficiency at the ideal time. This is only set to become more the case as researchers continue to study the efficiency of these modern techniques, and how each can be best utilized to provide not just the healthcare providers we need right now, but those who we also rely upon to take us forward into the future of medicine.
