New technology and a committed group of educators and innovators in the Department of Emergency Medicine are making continuing education more accessible.
Panopto
Drs. Josh Gaither, Dan Beskind, Jennifer Smith, Amber Rice, and Moses Mhayamaguru have launched a new initiative using the video recording tool Panopto to expand availability of CE lectures for EMS professionals.
Providing professional development opportunities to EMS professionals is not new. The department’s EMS team has been offering the lectures for the past three years. What is new is using the Panopto video platform, which is allowing them to reach a much larger audience.
“Over the last four months, our group has been using Panopto to share weekly prehospital CE opportunities with EMS agencies across southern Arizona,” said Dr. Gaither. “Previously, we were limited to offering CE webinars at a single site, which restricted shift provider attendance and excluded those providers practicing in rural areas.”
“In our initial trial period, we have been able to conduct webinars connecting one central lecture with outlying fire departments and their EMS providers. By implementing this distance-learning strategy, we not only provide CE to a larger group of providers, but we also have the potential to reduce costs and improve CE quality for everyone.”
Still in the roll-out period, lectures currently are limited to webcasts at two to three locations at a time, Dr. Gaither said.
“As we improve our IT skills using this tool, we are looking forward to working with more EMS providers in the future, including offering national registry curriculum for EMT or paramedic recertification. More exciting news to come in 2017!
Convo
Drs. Jarrod Mosier and Albert Fiorello also implemented Convo, a communication platform for encouraging discussion of real-time clinical cases for faculty, residents and fellows. Convo looks and behaves like popular social networks, but is secure and HIPAA compliant.
Convo allows for image sharing, in-context commenting and facilitates open communication and to the point discussions. Emergency physicians and physicians-in-training are able to discuss clinical cases and learn about medical breakthroughs in a collaborative and user-friendly internal online environment. Read an interview with Dr. Mosier featured on the Convo website.