Abstract
In many countries, healthcare professionals are required to participate annually in compulsory continuing medical education (CME). The effort involved in providing wide-scale training led the Italian Ministry of Health to support pilot courses using online distance learning. This article reports the results of a short survey which aimed to gauge the potential of online CME for nurses in Italy. Most of the 152 respondents, all of whom had completed an online course, supported the inclusion of some form of collaborative learning. Three possible market segments for online learning emerged from the study: nurses who prefer to study alone, those who would appreciate collaborative activities well-integrated into course design, and those who would prefer courses that include online collaboration of any kind. The authors conclude that online learning is a suitable mode for enabling participation in CME for accreditation, but caution that further research is required to confirm that the preferences of nurses who have experienced online distance learning are shared by those who have not.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Online Learning Activities: Learning activities in which students interact with resources, or other students, or both, using the capabilities of the Internet or other computer-based communication networks.
Continuing Professional Education (CPE): Postqualification education undertaken by professionals to ensure they keep up to date with developments in their field.
Social Learning: Learning through social interaction with other people.
Continuing Medical Education (CME): Postqualification professional development, education, and training activities undertaken by doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers in order to keep their knowledge up to date.
Online Collaborative Learning: Learning that uses the Internet and Internet-enabled software tools to support social and collaborative learning among students at a distance from one another and from their instructor.
Collaborative Learning: Learning that occurs through the exchange of knowledge among learners.
CME Credits: A system for calculating the amount of CME a healthcare professional has undertaken. In many countries, or for many professional bodies, a minimum number of CME credits must be obtained in a given period to retain accreditation to practice.