(22) Online Collaborative Learning as Means for Fostering

Awareness for Healthcare Safety

                           יואל דונחין¹,² , מירי  ברק² , גיזל  גרין ²,³  ¹האוניברסיטה העברית  ²טכניון  ³מכללת רופין

 

Studies have shown that by applying principles of human factors engineering to healthcare industry contributes to a significant reduction in medical mishaps. Those principles do not receive the proper attention in medical education, in the curriculum of medical schools as well as in physician education. In today's hospitals, safety principles are either overlooked or presented theoretically, with no connection to the practitioner's actual work. Purposefully educating medical staff for healthcare safety, at the beginning of their professional careers, may better promote their awareness to patient and practitioner safety. Following this idea, a five-week online course, entitled: Introduction to Medical Safety was developed for enhancing practitioner's collaborative learning during the period of their clinical practice. The course includes five lessons: a. Errors and faults in medical systems, b. Limitation of human capabilities, c. Divided attention and its clinical implications, d. the analysis of workstations based on the MOH model, and e. the concept of safety culture and climate. Each lesson includes a short video lecture that presents the main topic, a reading assignment that provides a wide overview of the topic, and a collaborative assignment that requires exploratory learning in the hospitals. The students, who are learning from distance and working in different hospitals, share their knowledge via cloud-based platforms, thus gaining a better understanding of a variety of situations. In this presentation we will describe the pedagogical and technological principles that guided the development of the innovative online course and share some insights about how to develop online learning materials for effective distance learning.