Examples

MRSA

Examples

Throughout 2004 we all witnessed the huge amount of press coverage and concern about the growth of Hospital Acquired Infection in our hospitals. Because of this, and inspired by the personal experience of one of our team, we decided that this would be a very worthwhile project to undertake to illustrate the potential benefits of a 'Portal'approach to e-learning, facilitated by Acce-lerator.

The project faced and overcame a number of challenges:

  1. Subject matter expertise - we were not healthcare professionals so worked closely with those in the NHS, including the Infection Control Nurses Association (ICNA) to agree the content. We decided at the outset that this would be an awareness course, designed as a learning resource to support other training initiatives. To this end it would focus on attitudes and adopt an interactive style of learning to involve the student.
  2. Technology - the IT infrastructure within the NHS is 'variable' and therefore any online solution has to embrace a number of accessibility issues. Content created using Acce-lerator is very sympathetic to these issues, requiring low bandwidth and is 'firewall' (network security) friendly.

From beginning to end, the project took just 13 weeks to develop and launch the first course, focused on the Acute (hospital) sector. Within a few weeks of launch nearly 50% of NHS Trusts had access to the programme for all staff via a license agreement.

Following the uptake of the 'Acute' version, we started to get requests for a new version of the course aimed at the community health sector. Following discussions with experts from this sector, we were able to use Acce-lerator to modify the existing content and embed scenarios more appropriate to the community setting.

We have been able to easily maintain the content of both courses, using Acce-lerator, to reflect feedback from practitioners in the field and the latest developments in 'best-practice' in a subject area that is evolving rapidly.

To get further information on the MRSA portal, please visit www.mrsa.no.com.