Amping Up Patient Satisfaction with Microlearning
It’s no secret that the patient experience impacts care outcomes.1 But what can healthcare employees do to ensure a positive experience when the factors that contribute or detract are so varied?
While more straightforward issues like parking or long wait times can certainly contribute to a negative patient experience, what makes for a truly positive experience? When it comes down to it, it’s about how patients feel.2, 3
Do they feel peace of mind, like everyone is doing all they can for them and working well together? Do they sense that the teamwork is strong, the communication is good, and the empathy is real?
It’s essential that patient-facing employees have the right balance of technical/clinical and interpersonal skills. While most of the necessary technical skills are learned through years of schooling and professional continuing education, soft skills—like those that support collaboration, communication, and empathetic care—must be learned on the job through practice over time.
Why Microlearning?
Skills that support communication, empathy, connection, and conflict management are both learned on the job and essential to supporting patient satisfaction and care outcomes. Speeding up the development of these skills is paramount to ensuring the best possible care for all patients. One way to amplify learning and knowledge retention is through microlearning.
Microlearning is a method of training that breaks down complex information into small, digestible pieces of content, often only two to three minutes in length. Because research indicates that knowledge retention is significantly increased when information is presented regularly and in short bursts4 and microlearning demands a very low time commitment from learners, it is especially effective in expediting on-the-job training for healthcare professionals to support a strong patient experience.
One of the most effective ways to engage learners with these activities is through content rich with real-world scenarios that represent how information can be applied to day-to-day practice.
This way, learners can see firsthand how the skills and techniques addressed through microlearning are applicable to their work and are able to enter new or unexpected workplace scenarios with the skills and confidence of having practiced them in a fail-safe environment.
Want to learn more about how microlearning can help you improve patient satisfaction? MedBridge believes that high quality education is the key to improving patient outcomes. Implement a winning professional development plan that includes microlearning resources on patient experience, soft skills, change management, and quality improvement.
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2020). Ambulatory Care Improvement Guide—Section 2: Why Improve Patient Experience? Retrieved from https://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/quality-improvement/improvement-guide/2-why-improve/index.html
- DiMatteo, M. R. (1994). Enhancing patient adherence to medical recommendations. Journal of the American Medical Association, 271(1), 79–83.
- Haskard Zolnierek, K. B. & Dimatteo, M. R. (2009). Physician communication and patient adherence to treatment: a meta-analysis. Medical Care, 47(8), 826–34.
- Emerson, L. C. & Berge, Z. L. (2018). Microlearning: Knowledge management applications and competency-based training in the workplace. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 10(2), 125–132.
