The shift to remote working for many in 2020 appears to have been reflected in a significant appetite for e-learning, with Health Education England’s e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) Hub having passed the milestone of 20 million content launches so far this year.
Over the last 14 years, the e-LfH hub has seen 50 million session launches, with close to half of those having come in the last 12 months.
It bolsters the view that there has been a real hunger shown among the health and care workforce to engage with e-learning, with the growth in usage of e-LfH resources shows there is great demand for a blended approach to learning across the sector.
Patrick Mitchell, Director of Innovation and Transformation at Health Education England said: “Twenty million launches in a single year is a very significant milestone and achievement for Health Education England e-Learning for Healthcare and reflects how important our role is in providing education and training resources for the health and care workforce.
“It represents 20 million training interventions to help hard working staff deliver better patient care.
“This increase in use can partly be attributed to our coronavirus programme, which is regularly being updated to meet the needs of the workforce responding to the pandemic, the NHS Test and Trace resources and the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
“But it is also reflective of changes in working patterns and practices as a whole. There were already high levels of usage for online learning and that has been further heightened by the pandemic, as face-to-face sessions and ‘hands on’ learning have been replaced for many by e-learning and other online learning solutions. “
HEE e-LfH, which is part of the Technology Enhanced Learning team, supports patient care by developing e-learning resources to educate and train the health and care workforce. Currently more than 400 e-learning programmes are available, or being developed, in collaboration with organisations including Royal Colleges, Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Public Health England.
HEE e-LfH’s programmes cover subjects from audiology to anaesthesia, dentistry to dermatology, electronic fetal monitoring to end of life care, primary care to prescribing, safeguarding children to statutory and mandatory training.
