Care for Learning offers nationwide education and training for healthcare professionals. Directly via various modules on its own website, or in a white-label variant for healthcare institutions: in its own house style, tone of voice and with attention to organization-specific topics. Care for Learning makes both appearances with the Learning Management Software from Procademy. We speak with Nadine de Mooij - van Tiel, one of the three owners of Zorg voor Leren, responsible for, among other things, the technical aspects of online learning. Because what does online learning for the healthcare professional actually look like?
"Because we wanted to offer our customers an affordable solution to the online learning problem, I started focusing on developing Learning Management Software (LMS) in Wordpress. After all, a low-cost LMS for our type of customers didn't really exist yet." opens Nadine de Mooij the conversation. "A series of tutorials later, there stood a perfectly working LMS, with which our customers, mainly the somewhat smaller healthcare institutions, could very affordably offer e-learning to their healthcare professionals."
That approach turned out to be quite unique and quite quickly caused a nice growth in the number of clients at Care for Learning. "Nice of course, but it also brought challenges. The solution we had developed was not very scalable and involved a lot of manual work. For example, when creating accounts and payments." Besides that process challenge, the Wordpress setup also failed to properly address an important commercial opportunity, Nadine says: "We were increasingly asked if we could create a dedicated learning environment for healthcare institutions. So with our own house style and learning paths supplemented with company-specific information. But we couldn't get that right in our technical setup."
After carefully scouring the market for alternatives, Care for Learning came across Procademy in 2018. "We already had the first white label customer, so it was really time for the tech." laughs Nadine. "In Procademy we quickly recognized an ambitious young organization that wanted to grow with us. And, not unimportantly, with a very flexible, affordable solution. In our exploration of the market, I noticed that often only the number of licenses really counts. Below a certain number, you're not as relevant to LMS developers. At Procademy , since the start of the cooperation, there has been the feeling that we are really doing it together."
That collaboration immediately provided Zorg voor Leren with a major efficiency gain. "Creating accounts, making payments, all these operations are fully automated in Procademy. We also get far fewer user questions. It all actually points itself out." Procademy also benefits from the cooperation, Nadine explains: "Procademy had to learn the healthcare sector. Learning in healthcare is specific. It is nice to see how they have gone through that development and now really speak the language completely. I'm sure that will also help them with other organizations in the industry. Only a good thing, because I expect the demand for well-trained personnel in healthcare to increase considerably. And that, of course, will also affect the demand for online learning."
So a clear outlook for the future. More demand for online learning in healthcare. But what then makes an e-learning for a healthcare professional a good e-learning? "First of all, it has to be simple. As short as possible, which is different from 'just short.' It's much more about appropriate material." explains Nadine. "An experienced worker, should be able to move quickly towards the testing part and not be forced to work through all the material first. A re-entrant does need to have access to more in-depth material. The material, especially in healthcare, must always be up to date. For small healthcare organizations without a dedicated training officer, with an LMS from a large club, this is often a challenge. Your updates come in the pile. With us, you either do it yourself, or we take care of it. Today a new care protocol is tomorrow a custom training. That really adds value for the healthcare professional."
So positive sounds mostly, but surely there is still something left to be desired? "Of course there is always room for improvement. The good thing is that we frequently sit down and discuss these points and that Procademy thinks along with us. Sometimes an alternative working method turns out to be perfectly suitable, sometimes a point needs to be put on the development list. A list that we can monitor well and from which we can therefore see when we can expect adjustments. As I said before, there is real cooperation. For me, flexibility, agility as well as service orientation are paramount at Procademy. And that feels very pleasant." Nadine concludes with satisfaction.
