E learning for undergraduate health
professional education
A systematic review informing a radical transformation
of health workforce development
Edited by: Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, Rifat Atun, Josip
Car, Azeem Majeed, Erica Wheeler
A defining feature of
health systems in the 21st century will be the capacity to respond to
populations’ needs, while at the same time anticipating future scenarios and
effectively planning for evolving requirements. Nowhere is this more apparent
than in the health workforce domain: a fundamental mismatch exists between
supply and demand in both the global and national health labour markets, and
this is likely to increase due to prevalent demographic, epidemiologic and macroeconomic
trends.
Unchecked loss of health
workers due to attrition and migration, maldistribution within countries, absolute
deficits in some low- and middle-income countries, uneven quality and
performance of the health workforce, outdated training models and an
over-reliance on cadres focusing on curative services in secondary and tertiary
care settings are some of the most common health workforce challenges hindering
efforts to attain global and national health objectives. At the same time, we
have better evidence than ever before on effective solutions. For instance, it
is widely recognized that what, how and where students are taught and who educates
and trains the health workforce are major factors in determining the readiness
and resilience of a health system, including the capacity to produce the
adequate types and number of health workers, to equip them with the required competencies,
and to deploy and retain them where they are most needed.
The scope and magnitude
of the health workforce challenges we face require both greater investment and
more effective and strategic use of available resources: in this context, it becomes
necessary to fully exploit the potential of innovative approaches and new
technologies to health workforce education, deployment and management.
We live in an era where
technology is enabling us to gain knowledge at a speed formerly inaccessible.
Information and communication technology (ICT) in particular, is an effective
enabler to improve the health of populations, both directly and through
improved health workforce capacity and accessibility.
The Department of Health
Workforce in collaboration with the Department of Knowledge, Ethics and
Research commissioned this report to provide countries with evidence to inform
and guide the adoption of innovative, technology-enabled models into health
professional education, so as to augment capacities to scale up production,
enhance quality and relevance of training, and adopt equity-focused policies.
The analysis identifies
the different forms of ICT that are used to deliver undergraduate health
professional education and evaluates the effects of both networked and
non-networked computer-based eLearning on students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes
and satisfaction. It provides insight into advantages and disadvantages of
eLearning and an overview of how the quality of eLearning can be measured.
Importantly, it identifies and discusses the critical success factors for the implementation
and adaptation of eLearning interventions, as well as strategies to equitably
and effectively introduce, institutionalize and sustain eLearning.
Furthermore, the report
demonstrates the need to strengthen mechanisms at the country level between
health workforce institutions of higher learning and ministries of health and education,
in order to support quality education across an increasing number of health
professionals.
eLearning has an
under-exploited potential to support health workforce capacity building in
different contexts, and can empower health workers to take charge directly of
their own competency development, to enable them to play a full role as change
agents in addressing the challenges we will face in the 21stcentury.
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