Accessibility of Continuous Medical Training During COVID-19 Pandemic

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic has halted practical training sessions to comply with social distancing in order to reduce transmission. Online learning has now taken place to ensure continuity of education. However, not many modules are structured nor can provide a good platform for trainers and participants. Many online learning materials are given as links, texts, images and videos however the information is disorganized.

Hospital acquired infections and its impact such as unnecessary morbidity and mortality, increased antimicrobial resistance and massive cost to healthcare system are influenced by the ways healthcare staff perform their tasks. Healthcare workers need to be properly trained to ensure correct infection control practices. We organized the Pahang Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Training Module, a structured learning module which extracts important chapters from Ministry of Health’s Infection Prevention and Control Policies and Procedures 3^rd Edition. We proceeded with this research to cater to the new norm of online learning and find a suitable method for a structured training module to be used by participants.

METHODS

We started with Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan as the pilot hospital. We selected 100 healthcare staff as participants. They were placed in a social media group where briefing, explanation and updates were informed. The training module starts with participants receiving notes on the selected topics. On the subsequent days, the participants receive a link daily corresponding to the scheduled module. The link allowed them to register and access to the pre-recorded teaching which they are able to view at any time during the two-weeks course. At the end, they had to undergo an online assessment to gage their understanding where they e-Certificate of Achievement if they passed more than 70 marks. All received e-Certificate of Participation for joining.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

After a formal invitation were sent out to 100 participants, 80% registered online (80 participants). 65% participants took the IPC Online Assessment (52 participants from 80 registered participants) and 67% passed (35 participants from 52 participants who took the assessment).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we found that despite COVID-19 pandemic, continuity of education can still be conducted through online teaching. Despite limitations of direct training, more than half of participants who sat for the assessment can pass. The limitations are monitoring of the assessment. The coordinator needs to ensure that the method of delivery is organized and participants are able to understand. We decided to scale this larger in our next study by organizing all registration, modules and assessment into one website and extending to other healthcare workers in Pahang hospitals. Further study will be required to correlate if this training module can correlate with any reduction in hospital acquired infection.