Moodle in healthcare

Moodle in healthcare

by Timothy Jobson -
Number of replies: 58

We have implemented Moodle in a healthcare environment - we need both learning management and course  management funtionality, but budgets are tight - hence Moodle.

It has been a dramatic success - in just 6 months we have a site with 800 users, 90 resources and 60 lessons - lots more in progress / under development.

We have 4 key areas of focus - mandatory update for staff (moving away from the classroom); patient safety (with mandatory lessons for key clinical staff especially trainees); postgraduate medical education; and clinical IT training. We are planning to move into other areas soon.

Is anyone else doing similar?

Tim

I am clinical lead for IT in an acute hospital (serving 350,000 pop) - our Moodle installation covers healthcare domains across the whole county (5 organisations, >8k employees!)

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Duane Knudsen -

Hi Tim,

I too work for a healthcare organization that covers a whole county. We have around 4k employees in the Phoenix, Arizona area that includes a hospital, 2 psych facilities, and about a dozen clinics. We currently use KDS from MC Strategies, a subsidiary of Elsevier.

I am the Education and Training Manager for the organization. Our current LMS was implemented a little over a year ago. I am not opposed to looking at alternatives at this time. I am interested to see how much customizing of Moodle you had to do in order to have it 'fit' healthcare.

Also, I am working on my Ph.D. in Education Technology Management. I am trying to pinpoint a topic for my dissertation work. I think something about how education technology is used in the healthcare setting would be interesting.

Duane

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In reply to Duane Knudsen

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Anthony Borrow -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Duane - I know that from a social justice perspective, I was excited years ago when I read that Moodle was being used in South Africa to help train/educate nurses in dealing with HIV/AIDS. I think that you could probably get a Moodle course setup pretty easily. I suspect that the implementation of outcomes in 1.9 would be of benefit. I'm not sure what resources you might need to schedule for an online course. Considering the cost of Moodle, I would certainly encourage you to download a copy and install it locally so that you can experiment with it and see how it might best suit your needs. Peace - Anthony
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In reply to Duane Knudsen

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Scott Karren -
I am currently working on putting a pilot program together to replace our current admin system with Moodle at the hospital that I work for. Part of that pilot will be integrating content from MC Strategies. I would be interested to know if anyone else is trying to do this, what modules they are using, and any other customizations that are being done.

Duane, what has been your experience with MC strategies thus far?

Scott Karren
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Duane Knudsen -

Hi Scott,

One of things that sold us on going with MC Strategies was the Joint Commission content that they have. Their only customers are healthcare providers. The content was complete but very basic: linear with nothing more than next/back. However, this year they are coming out of their shell and providing the updated JC content in more of an interesting and interactive format.

As far as the vendor, MCS was great to work with for implementation, etc. and they are very customer minded. They merged with Elsevier (huge conglomeration now) who is one of the biggies in healthcare. MCS was always hip on integrating new things that we requested but since becoming part of the larger umbrella that has slowed things down quite a bit. From a platform perspective, the LMS has a ways to go. However, pricing and content is right on. We will be up for renewal of the LMS in another year to year and a half. Am keeping different options/ideas open and that is what has me curious about Moodle. I would be very interested in following your endeavors. If we switched platforms for some reason, I would most likely continue with MCS for the mandatory JC/OSHA content though (which I'm assuming is your interest with them). So I can recommend them from that standpoint.

It looks like we have similar interests and work.

Duane

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In reply to Duane Knudsen

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Scott Karren -
Duane,

You are right on the mark. We went with MC Strategies because of the Joint Commission and Mosbey's content they have. We have not been real impressed with the LMS itself and needed a self registration piece that MC Strategies lacks. If we were to change platforms we would likely maintain a contract with MC Strategies for the content. I will keep you posted on our successes/progress.

Scott Karren
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In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Giovanni Saccavino -

Hi to everybody

I'm Giovanni from Udine (NE of Italy)

I'm student at the 2nd level degree for the Health Professions in Padua (Italy) and I'm tutor at the 1st degree in Physiotherapy at the University of Udine.  I hope to graduate in september 2008, discussing a thesis about e-learning in public health. My idea is to make and discuss over a plan for a shared platform (moodle) for the whole professionals in a public hospital.

I'm at the beginning of this work and every contribution is welcome.

Few things to specify my needs:

1) Planning models in use, possibly with success smile

2) What are in your opinion the main elements pro and versus  a successful developement of moodle in health context?

3) What are in your experience the contents that best fit for distance-learning (using moodle) in health?

ThankYou in advance

Giovanni

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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Derek Chirnside -
You are the second health guy to be posting here recently.
See http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=97573

Moodle is great: the lecturer > course > student/praticipant model means you can set up niche areas of interest with forums and file sharing, calendars, glossaries, databases etc etc

But the real work comes in setting up the social environment into which this works: hosting of forums, creating a collaorative environment etc etc. There is a saying "just because you buikld it doesn't mean they will come"

There is no pro/con - it's more on need from the point ov view of the participatns, (is it real?) does it save time/effort (or is it just an add-on?).

Health is well set up for sharing of stories and case studies. Re-certification is a big thing in our country. Setting up small videos near a discussion forum has often been a useful aid to help people get ready for clinical re-assessments.

Sharing of teaching resources is another bonus - but insecurity has caused this to slow significantly.

Monitoring and peer review around long term projects is also easier (and more fun) with a Moodle-type environment - esp if you are distance studying,. It is just so easy to share drafts, share comments in a collaborative small group.

As Matt says in the above thread: There are many ways to use Moodle, it just depends on your imagination and your resources. I would say it's primary purpose is to support learning, and the concept of courses, students, and teachers are inherent in how it's been developed. And for that, it's an excellent tool.

More advice is this: find a Moodle course and join it for a while. Invariably, our best tutors have actually used Moodle as a tool as a student.

Buona fortuna Giovanni


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Moodle in healthcare

by Giovanni Saccavino -

Dear Derek,

thank you for your very fast answer. I know the general features of moodle as teacher (I'm experimenting it's use from about one year and half with my students). I'm very happy and every day I discover things (certification module is the new for today!).

Yesterday I found a book by W. H. Rice IV and I hope to learn ASAP how to install and manage moodle ASAP, first locally on my PC, then on a server of a public hospital if avaiable wink

But the main matter is how to organize moodle to give real support to health professionals. Most of their jobs is based on practical skills and I've the real need to understand if building an on-line course would be an help or not.

Just two examples: "Correct Hand Washing Protocol" (easy) "Orthopaedic Medicine Course for Physiotherapists" (more complex). Everyone using moodle is able to upload txt, audio, video and manage every collaborative tool and we strongly agree on the fact that some of the contents should be blended with frontal lessons but... I always ask to myself: "are there articles and works that can demonstrate that this is a good and cheap way to communicate  skills in healthcare?"

I love moodle but I've a lot of doubts thoughtful

Giovanni

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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by William Rice -

Giovanni,

Welcome to the Moodle family. I am a training manager at a major health care center in New York City. I use Moodle for on-demand, asynchronous courses for our staff.

For teaching physical skills, may I suggest that you use the Moodle courses to teach all of the prerequisite knowledge, and also any mnemonics for that skill. Then, upon completion of the online course, allow the student to either demonstrate the skill to a teacher who can "grade" them, or enroll the student in a live course.

Let me address your hand washing example. The sequence of events might look like this:

  1. Allow the employee to enroll him/herself in the Moodle course, using the employee ID number as their username and perhaps their birthdate as their password.
  2. Once in the course, the student reads the protocol for hand washing. Now the student has been given a written explanation of proper hand washing.
  3. The student watches a video demonstrating the proper technique, with a voice over explaining it. This is the same information that was in the written document. Now the student has been given a visual and auditory explanation of proper hand washing.
  4. The student steps through a lesson that quizzes the student on each aspect of the technique. The lesson shows a remedial page each time the student submits a wrong answer, and reinforcement each time the student submits a right answer. Now the student has been given the chance to exercise their knowledge.
  5. The student is given a mnemonic to help remember the protocol. Perhaps the mnemonic can be superimposed over a speeded-up video of the hand washing technique.
  6. It would be fun if the course had a Flash activity, where the parts of the mnemonic are scrambled. The student must drag the parts into the proper order.
  7. The student takes a quiz on proper hand washing technique.
  8. The student contacts one of the Teachers in the course, to demonstrate the technique. You can put the list of Teachers, and their contact info, in a document in the course.
  9. The student demonstrates hand washing for the Teacher.
  10. The Teacher marks the employee as competent in this skill, either in Moodle or some other employee management system.

The summary is that when teaching a physical skill, Moodle can save valuable course time by enabling you to:

  • Give the student a way to self-register for the physical class.
  • Convey and test prerequisite knowledge for the physical class.
  • Record successful demonstration of the physical skill.

Remember that the physical part of the class doesn't always need to be a scheduled class time. It can be one-on-one time with a mentor or manager.

Regards,

W. H. Rice IV

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In reply to William Rice

hand washing over moodle

by Giovanni Saccavino -

William,

Thank you very very much.

I apologize for my short answer but now I'm connected via mobile.

Giovanni

P.S. Very nice and useful your book!

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In reply to William Rice

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Shelly Fritz -

Hi Giovanni,

I am brand new to Moodle.  In fact this is my first attempt to post or do anything on Moodle.  I work in Clinical Staff Development at a Critical Access Hospital in Washington State.  Our hospital covers over 500 square miles of rural mountainous area.  I am trying to find a way to hold our Staff and Leadership meetings in an asychronous forum so our staff can communicate without being in the same room at the same time.  (Some of us live over an hour from work and cannot attend every meeting.)  I searched for asynchronous discussion boards and came of with Moodle as a good option but it appears Moodle is mostly used for teaching/learning situations.  Since you work in healthcare and use Moodle I thought I would ask if you have any ideas?  If I wanted to create my own forum where do I start?

Thank you for your time.

Shelly Fritz, RN, BSN

Clinical Staff Development

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In reply to Shelly Fritz

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Bryan Williams -

Shelly, Moodle does a good job of supporting both formal and informal learning. Informal learning (e.g., meetings) is a significant way learning transfers among groups of people. This is actually one of the greatest strenghs of Moode; that is, its constructivist foundation. Moodle has many features that support informal social learning in the workplace including Forums, Wikis (knowledge base), Blogs, Questionnaires and other activities. There is even a feature for creating an encyclopedia of terms (Glossary) specific to your field or workplace. When a document is created within Moodle that uses a listed Glossary term it displays a link so the user can easily reference the unfamiliar term. Lastly, Moodle supports synchronous virtual meeting technologies such as Skype, Adobe Connect and Elluminate. These technologies bring others right to your desktop in a very immediate way, eliminating the need to travel.

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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Caitlin Reed -

This is the most relevent post to what I am trying to learn, but unfortunately it is 4 years old! In the event someone else is meandering in this area, it would be great to get feedback.
Giovanni- if you are using it locally on your PC how many users are you expecting to have? I am looking at a very small # of users and was looking at this option. I too am really excited about Moodle but not sure if it is what I need. In your experience in healthcare support, are there other alternatives you have used? I am looking for a web-based forum for clinics to share resources. We need a calendar, forum, document-sharing, and password protection. That is all. I wonder if I'm making this too big considering Moodle.

Thanks in advance!

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In reply to Caitlin Reed

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
HI Caitlin, Certainly Moodle can be very useful for you in what you describe: supporting forums for clinics, sharing various kinds of resources, sharing a calendar, etc. There are also a number of peer sharing activities that be used in Moodle, but you can use other products to assist to (depending on appropriateness and goals) eg. google docs, repositories like Drop Box. Moodle can be as big or small as you need it, but you are right that it is important to assure that you choose the right overall tool for the job at hand. The NHS in the UK is using Moodle a great deal, as are most HEs and FEs, businesses and local councils. There is a lot of potential for healthcare and Moodle. Happy to answer more questions or be of help!smile
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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
Hi Giovanni,
E-Learn Design (Scotland's Moodle Partner) works with quite a few of the various National Health Service sections at the moment, including National Education Scotland as part of the NHS. We mostly work closely with them to develop online learning modules for staff training of various kinds (new procedures, introducing new standards in various aspects of public health, and CPD). But we have also developed 'bite sized learning modules' for things like Numeracy and Nursing and 'wholly distance modules' for Clinical Psychologists training to become Supervisors. The NHS in Scotland has only recently 'adopted' Moodle and it is really taking off here. Our clients find it very friendly to use and both the staff and the public can access it easily. I'd say the main pro elements include the flexibility that Moodle allows for course design, the various elements of formative learning that can be incorporated into a learning space (and all the instant feedback that you can attach to those), as well as the ability to personalise the learning using more complicated Lesson designs. The fact that Moodle is openly accessible and web based means that people can do 'lunch time' sessions in their leisure and not be intimidated by it. The only con we have come across so far is some initial obstacles with the Health Services infrastructure and firewall etc., but these are being addressed.
Best,
Deneka
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In reply to Deneka MacDonald

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Giovanni Saccavino -

Hi Deneka. Thank you very much for your answer.

I understand that the first thing to test is the knowledge of health professionals about Informatics with a short  questionnaire (I'm not sure that all the people is able to perform on a PC in an Italian Public Hospital). Second I must know what kind of contents are more preferred by Health Operators and by the Organization (and I must join them together). Third the needs are to be selected. Some courses could be completely online, some blended, some embedded... and so on.

Then I will project the courses on moodle... after contacts with IT, health personnell and administration managers in the hospital! Heavy duty because a past e-learning experience failed in the same Institution.

Am I right?

Giovanni 

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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
That sounds like a pretty comprehensive approach to me Giovanni.

It is important, in my experience, to ensure that you have a good chat with IT if the users will be using your course within a healthcare network to investigate any possible barriers with firewalls etc. I know here, for instance, there are sometimes issues with even pdf files in Moodle for the NHS! Usually, however, once you've identified the issues you can try to work around them or, better yet, work with IT to sort them out.

What kinds of users have you identified? (ie. the public/staff at the health service, age groups, etc?) Do you already know what the focus of the content will be?
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In reply to Deneka MacDonald

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Timothy Jobson -

Thanks for all the responses - sorry have been away for a while. In general  I think Moodle is adaptable for healthcare training - it is easily flexible enough, provides enough variety in terms of learning modules, and provides good enough functionality for tracking training and activity.

I am really impressed with NHS Scotland's decision.

This is in sharp contrast to what is currently happening across NHS England. South of the border the focus is on rolling out a national solution (driven by NHS Connecting for Health - as part of the national programme: see e-health insider - to see how it is all going). This solution links the Electronic Staff Record with Oracle Learning Management, linking to 3rd party content providers, with little or no opportunity for local content generation. Given our experience to date with top down IT implementations I predict problems for all sorts of reasons (insufficient local implementation resource, insufficient system knowledge, complexity of solution, inflexible content etc etc).

I am promoting Moodle as the alternative to this. I believe the solution in healthcare is to share content - and I am certainly happy to share content I have created (although I struggle to find time as well as manage this and other IT projects to do as much as I would like). NHS England organisations are not mandated to take OLM - but the pressure is on!

Tim

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Jeff Burge -

Hi Tim,

I'm the mandatory training lead in a Mental Health Trust in SE London and we switched to Moodle in January of this year. Having introduced eLearning around three years ago it proved very successful; we're dispersed over 76 sites in three London Boroughs so reaching staff with traditional classroom based courses can prove challenging.

Having had high hopes for what OLM could provide us when it came we evaluated and felt, in addition to the points you raise, that it did not perform functionally or qualititatively and we looked for alternative ways of managing staff training.

Moodle manages all of our eLearning and we are now using the Face 2 Face module to manage our classroom training too so it has become our primary LMS for mandatory training.

The flexibility of the system means that, with some work, we are able to tailor reports precisely to our need as well as offer 'self service' course access but I think I've been very demanding with it to ensure it is a viable option whilst OLM responds to customer need.

I'd love to know more about what you're doing and how you're using it and I'm happy to share experiences and solutions too.

Regards,

Jeff

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In reply to Jeff Burge

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
Hi Jeff and Tim,
Sounds like you are both doing some really interesting work! Are any of your materials open to the public? Or do you try to mostly share materials in-house in order to avoid re-inventing the wheel?
d
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In reply to Deneka MacDonald

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Giovanni Saccavino -

Hi Deneka.

Sorry for the delay but I'm very busy in these days wink

At present time I'm working to built a questionnaire to discover the whishes from workers, admin personnel and health care professionals , to investigate on the more used cognitive styles and to joint them with age-groups. Do you know if there are such kind of tools ready to use?

Next week I'll go for a meeting with Educ. Manager in the hospital to understand better the organisation needs...

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In reply to Giovanni Saccavino

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
specifically for health services? no, sorry, I don't. But making use of Moodle to collect this data that will inform your project is a good idea. I'd recommend using Feedback. Good luck!
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In reply to Deneka MacDonald

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Timothy Jobson -

Deneka / Jeff

My original idea (6 months ago, but not progressed yet) was to set up a system for sharing content - if you like an open source approach to content - people could use lessons / quizzes etc they liked, or adapt them and post their adaptations. So any disagreement about the way to teach a topic etc would be resolved over time - with the best solutions shared. However I need to develop more of my own content first. I have stuck to my own text, and royalty free images etc with this in mind so there would not be copyright issues in future. Anything I have done is / will be available for sharing in future.

At the moment however I am trying to stop our own Moodle implementation being 'turned off'.......

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Timothy Jobson -

P.S. Can I use your posts, or edited highlights in my internal emails as part of my campaign to convince the non-believers?

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
Hi Tim,
I'm happy for you to use my posts and I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have that might help your campaign. Good luck!
d
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In reply to Deneka MacDonald

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Jonathan McFarland -
Hi everybody,
My name is Jonathan and I am basically a EMP (English for Medical Purposes) teacher. For the last 7 years I have been teaching specialist English to health profesionals in Mallorca. Recently I have been asked to set up an online course for Doctors in Medical english and the format suggested was Moodle.
The idea sounds great but really I know very little about moodle, and was wondering what advice you would give me for setting up this course. the aim is to start small, in one medium sized hospital but then start to include larger hsopitals and the primary care,as well.
thanks
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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Teresa Holten -
Tim,

Add me to the list of healthcare folks who are looking to Moodle as an LMS. I'm still in the evaluation phase, but like you, I'm looking for a way to deliver training for various compliance and certification requirements.

Specifically, I'm trying to determine whether Moodle can do the following things.
- Auto-notify students via e-mail WRT needing to complete training in subjects x, y, and z;
- Auto-confirm via e-mail when students have completed the training and passed the test;
- Allow enrollment based on JOB roles (ex: study coordinator vs. secretary vs. nurse).

What has been your experience?
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In reply to Teresa Holten

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Jeff Burge -

Hi Teresa,

I'm not sure that Moodle will do precisely what you are asking of it but one of the things I like most about it is its flexibility and the control I have over the system.

If I work back from your last question it may help answer the others but I am no IT specialist so this may not be the best option, though the workaround works for me.

I restrict access to all courses and control enrollment through a tool that our technical support built. This way I can identify, on an individual basis, which courses staff should be completing. For example, all in-patient nurses may need Resus training and all individuals within this staff group are enrolled when they join the organisation. When they login they can see in the My Courses section what they need to complete to satisfy the requirements of their role.

We extract into an external database details of all the courses an individual is enrolled onto, when they attended a classroom session or completed the relevant eLearning and we can then add to this when they will next need to update. We then use the database to generate individual reports which are periodically emailed to them. An overall report of activity, or lack thereof, is also emailed to senior managers.

Like I say, I am no expert but this is solution that was very quick to set up and is accurate and reliable.

Jeff

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In reply to Teresa Holten

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by doug gowan -
Hi Teresa
we are going to hold a i day conference on Moodling in healthcare on 21 January in London. The programme will be posted here soon
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In reply to doug gowan

Moodle in healthcare Conference 21st Jan

by Mike Salisbury -
Hi - I missed this - is there anywhere with more info / outcomes from the conference ?
Was it a MoodleMoot event or something separate ?
I am an IT consultant working with a couple of NHS trusts on e-learning and looking at using moodle for local content delivery, when they have the NLMS
cheers
Mike

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In reply to Mike Salisbury

Re: Moodle in healthcare Conference 21st Jan

by doug gowan -
The conference was a great success and a report will be posted here soon. We are planning some follow up events so you may want to express an interest now.
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In reply to doug gowan

Re: Moodle in healthcare Conference 21st Jan

by Genner Cerna -
please keep posted about plans on health care and moodle.

thanks
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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Dale Min -

Hi there,

I work as the academic coordinator in a rehabiliation hospital in Toronto, Canada.

We currently have a team of individuals that have developed (in its pilot stage) a web-based curriculum that is focused on educating post-licensure healthcare professionals about complex chronic diseases (such as TBI, Diabetes, etc.) in an intercollaborative way. So we basically comprise a "team" of healthcare professionals that are all from different fields and teach them about these diseases in an intercollaborative manner. We already have developed a "virtual classroom". In essence we are trying to approach this learning through a social constructionist method where we are more focused on the learners actually teaching each other, rather than a teacher delivering content to their students. The learners go online, go through content and discuss patient cases in an online classroom.

We are currently using LifeRay to deliver the content to the learners, however, it is a little bit difficult to manipulate and administrate without being somewhat knowledgeable with IT and IS.

We've heard about Moodle and after checking out sample websites, it seems to be pretty simple to use. Considering our situation, would anyone recommend us transitioning over to Moodle? or are there better solutions out there for what we are looking for?

Thanks in advance!

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In reply to Dale Min

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
You're asking people on the global Moodle site to recommend you use Moodle or to suggest a different solution? I think I know what they will saysmile Seriously though, I believe using Moodle in the way you wish to would be an excellent choice and the big advantage over commercial solutions is that if you have technical queries you get free support here 24/7. Definitely worth investigating further!
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Dale Min -

Thanks for your reply Mary.

I know I was taking a long shot by asking for people's opinion on the effectiveness of Moodle vs. any other solutions, but I was simply looking for some honest opinions in terms of whether or not Moodle would suit the needs for our curriculum. There's no point in implementing Moodle if it doesn't do what you need it to do, just the same as someone using a commercial LMS and then realizing that Moodle is a better choice for them.

Thanks!

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In reply to Dale Min

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -
Hi Dale,
The health care system in the UK is using Moodle quite a lot. It is the official VLE for NHS Scotland and many different factions within the system throughout the UK are using it with a great deal of success. I think you will find that it suits your needs really well. Moodle has a social constructionist perspective in its design with a great variety of interactive modules for learners to participate in. Sharing resources between collaborative teams is also made very easy and efficient in Moodle. We work with many NHS clients (in the UK) who have found Moodle to be the answer they were looking for.

Hope that helps!
Deneka
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In reply to Dale Min

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
If you read Pedagogy you will see that Moodle was designed with a social constructionist pedagogy in mind. And with forums, wikis, collaboratively created glossaries and databases, it supports that in numerous ways.
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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by rosemary whitehed -

I am a solo medical librarian in a small community hospital.  I want to combine library services with courses for nurses and residents into one site using Moodle. 

We are probably going to use Remote Learners for webhosting; they have a curriculum management module called "ELIS".  Not sure if we should buy this or not. 

The hospital IT department probably be able to offer much support. I would appreciate input to see if I am going in the right direction.

Thanks!

Rosemary

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In reply to rosemary whitehed

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Jeff Burge -
I thought people may be interested in reading an update of our experience of Moodle in Healthcare.

It has been more than two years since we implemented Moodle. In year one we used it to manage our elearning and mandatory training but realising the benefits we committed to Moodle and around 18 months ago began using it as our primary LMS.

We now have records of almost 200 courses, some of which are one-off events, others, comprehensive programmes providing access to a range of resources. We have more than 3000 active users in the system and it has been a huge success for us.

We use the Face-to-face module to provide remote booking access to classroom training events and use it to manage all of our Continuing Professional Development as well as statutory and mandatory training.

As a public body our performance is measured by, amongst other things, our achievement against certain governance standards. One of these, the NHS Litigation Authority standards, we were awarded level 2 status in January of this year, helped in no small part by our utilisation of Moodle. In addition to passing we were highly commended for our systems and processes and received feedback that our current practive would allow us to achieve level 3, the highest standard available.

In addition Moodle has allowed us to achieve significant gains in our stat/mand training compliance and we have also made very creative use of some of the plug-ins to measure things such as Development Review activity and Clinical Supervision uptake.

Despite these successes I do not think that we are using Moodle anywhere near its full potential and with some creative thought it continues to offer a really exciting range of tools and interventions to support learning.
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In reply to Jeff Burge

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Ro Eng -
I work for a health system in Virginia..we are thissss close to concidering using Moodle for our staff learning and development. We currently use it for our schools (nursing, RT etc) and I think it is great. Do you use anything with moodle to keep track of transcripts etc?
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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by pere martin -
Hello, i'm Pere Martin working for Elsevier HealthScience in Barcelona (Spain). Last year we have been developing a Moodle implementation to offer our courses to physicians, nurses,...

Moodle is a great tool, but you need a bit of creativity to leverage to another level....but we are on the way!!

I'll be gald to share with people that work in similar environments (Health + Moodle) to share experiences and...difficulties of course!!!
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In reply to pere martin

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Jennifer Dorning -

I am the IT Educator of a medium sized community hospital just outside of Tornoto Ontario. We are currently in the development stage of creating an LMS using Moodle.

I have a thousand questions and would love to hear any tales you'd like to share on lessons learned.

1. Adapting Moodle for Healthcare

2. Obtaining user buy-in with a user base that is varied regarding computer literacy.

3. What works well and what doesn't.

Thanks all

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Mark Minary -

Hello there,

I am interested in rolling out moodle across our  organisation, 800 users  one of my challenges is the NHS N3 network. Most of my end users will need to access the VLE via N3 and on the IE 6 platform. Has anyone else come across similar challenges?

Regards,

Mark.

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Eric Kugler -

Hi.  We are thinking about setting up an open source LMS like Moodle to meet the needs of healthcare workers in a large heathcare system, for both classroom training as well as e-learning.  It seems like open source is the best way to go for many reasons.  We are willing to commit some of our programmers to this endeavor to rebuild the feature set to which our users are already accustomed.  e.g., classroom management such as automated badge scanning, waitlisting, integration with HRIS system, managing multiple hospital cost centers, etc... I am wondering if anyone here can lead me in the right direction to talk to a health system that has rolled out Moodle for a typical healthcare environment.  My initial thoughts are it would be nice if I didn't have to re-invent the wheel on all the features a hospital worker requires, but rather partner with one or more teams that have similar needs, so we can share features, code and workflow.  I would appreciate if someone could lead me in the right direction.

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In reply to Eric Kugler

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Deneka MacDonald -

Hi Eric,

I can recommend talking to The Learning and Workforce Development Officer at NHS Health Scotland.  They have been using Moodle for some time with great success and I'm sure they would be happy to talk through developments with you.

Hope that helps!

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In reply to Eric Kugler

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Ro Eng -

I tried to do some research at my health system about a year ago.  Never found anyone who 'did it'.  I would love to find out if you have any success etc.  Our company decided to go a different route with a different CMS/LMS.

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In reply to Ro Eng

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Eric Kugler -

Thanks very much for the feedback, Rhonda.  I will defintely keep you in the loop.  So far, thanks to some of the people out here, there appears to be some very large health systems using Moodle, some in the UK, some in Scotland.  I also have a friend at Penn State Med Center that I think is using Moodle.  I will investigate.  I was amazed that there are more than 37 million users using Moodle.  I am currently having a team of programmers analyze many of the major open source LMS solutions (Sakai, Dokeos, Chamilo, Docebo, Joomla, Olat, Google CloudCourse, etc...).  They are actually going so far as examining the code structure of each.  So far they are quite impressed with Moodle.  It appears that this sofware has come a long way over the years.  And as you know, the challenges of workforce learning in the typical healthcare system are fairly common across the board, e.g., e-learning for JCAHO courses, classroom management for nursing orientation, blended learning for Epic or Cerner EMR training, leadership development, medical device training, patient education, mobile learning, etc...

It's seems like a shame that we don't all have a really good open source LMS that is configured out of the box so U.S hospitals can use and adapt right away.  Anyway, I'll definitely keep you in the loop as move ahead in this project.  It is pretty exciting what we are finding out so far.  

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In reply to Eric Kugler

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Ro Eng -

Hi Eric...thanks for the follow up.  I will be very interested in your decisions and success.  I do like MOODLE.  We use it at our school of health careers.  The school has been using MOODLE for awhile now.  I have been with the school for one year and love MOODLE.  The success of MOODLE at the school was one of the factors that made us want to investigate its possibilities for the complete health system.  Too bad it did not pan out for us.  I am still trying to find a way to sneak it in as a possible site/tool for our boards/ board members.  smile

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In reply to Eric Kugler

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Shirley Anderson -

MC Strategies because of the Joint Commission and Mosbey's content they have. By Hotel Milano

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In reply to Shirley Anderson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Hazel Ortiz -

So far they are quite impressed with Moodle.  It appears that this sofware has come a long way over the years.  Thanks Agriturismo

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In reply to Timothy Jobson

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Keith Petry -

JC this year updated content! Very Good; Thanks Beta Utensili

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In reply to Keith Petry

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Nick Brattoli -

This is a ridiculously old thread, so I probably won't get any responses, but oh well.  Anyway, I have built a moodle installation, also in the healthcare industry, and I am wondering what you guys all do for when you get audited.

Right now, the auditors come in, and they pull a random sampling of employees' training files out of the file cabinet, then go through them one by one.  Basically, it is a portfolio for the user which has their information, and job type, required training on the front which is checked off if it is complete for the year, and then inside the folder is all of the certificates and peer reviews/supervision etc.

How are you managing all of this electronically? I want to A) Track all of the employees by their job category, which should keep track of what courses they have to take, and when it is due again, preferably auto-assigning the course when it becomes due again.  Most likely, I am going to have to develop something like this in-house.  Could anyone here point me in the right direction?

I have mahara set up too, and it is talking to moodle, so it would be nice if I could auto-create the profiles for all the users, with their required training, and when it's all due, and also export all of their enrolled courses, and all their grades and whatnot into said mahara portfolio. I can't imagine I am at the only organization to have this issue.

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In reply to Nick Brattoli

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Bernard Courant -

Nothing wrong with old threads.

We are currently on our 5th year will moodle as our on-line educational product. It has been a learning experience for us. Started very slowly, but has grown quite a bit.

Mostly using custom reports to extract the data needed for regulatory review. Has worked quite well.

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In reply to Bernard Courant

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Michelle Smith -

The healthcare organisation I work for is also coming up to 5 years using moodle as its LMS. We are about to do a cosmetic change and overhaul (clean up) of the site as it has over 150 courses, with over 5000 users at present. 

The ongoing challenge is maintaining integrity and quality of the material for the users as a legitimate tool to enhance their learning experience. 

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In reply to Michelle Smith

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Bernard Courant -

We're looking at purchasing content from a vendor, but most are just interested in selling access to their LMS. Have you had any experience along this line?

Bernard Courant

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In reply to Bernard Courant

Re: Moodle in healthcare

by Michelle Smith -

Yes, I was invited to a meeting to hear the pitch from an elearning company, that wanted us to change to their LMS and associated products that included building our content for us which meant making major changes to every aspect of our online learning environment.

The organisation didn't go ahead with that in the end, but have engaged a company to tailor moodle (our current LMS) to work better for our organisation. They are aiming to enable the educators (I'm one of them) to continue to develop and maintain our own content with their support and backup.

Michelle 

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