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Uniform Data System, Jan. 8, 9 QTS, Leadership Session, Feb. 27, 7:30 am - 1:30 pm QTS, Quality Institute, Feb. 27, 1:30 - 4 pm |
In this Issue
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Welcome to Senior Policy Coordinators Kimberly Keymer and Caleb Gilchrist. Welcome to Aza Nedhari, Project Specialist – AWI; and AWI Project Assistants Melissa Salinas and Kevin McNeill. Welcome to Cathy Morales, Director of Community Health Access and the AmeriCorps Community HealthCorp participants. Welcome to Linda Gardiner, RHIO Project Intern. |
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Medical Homes DC |
Gaming Your Way to Emergency Preparedness Who would’ve thought that in the process of playing a game of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” you could also receive basic emergency preparedness information. Well, that’s just what an online education and training system – the Simulation and Training Environment Lab (SiTEL) – is providing to thousands of its users! Developed by an expert team of educators, medical professionals, and technical specialists, SiTEL combines advanced technologies and medical research to give health care workers instant, up-to-date education and training solutions that can range from PowerPoint presentations to interactive games – just the kind of “edu-tainment” adult learners are cheering for these days. An unscientific poll of 12 DCPCA staff members was taken to see if they would rather be listening to a 30-minute lecture, or playing a five-minute game to receive the same information. The results were unanimous – games trumped lectures every time! Although gaming can be instructional, more traditional teaching methods are also available on SiTEL. These modules include voiced-over PowerPoint presentations with the standard bulleted objectives, goals, and ideas, to multi-media adaptations that include videos and immersive learning simulation to better emphasize a particular topic, such as donning and doffing personal protection equipment. For the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a multi-site health care facility, SiTEL has proven to be a successful e-learning tool. Greg Kantak, the clinic’s director of human resources, explained, “This was the first exploration into online training in a cohesive manner, and there has been an overwhelming response.” In less than 30 days, Kantak’s department has been able to provide emergency preparedness training to 74 percent of its newly registered staff. For the human resources department, SiTEL has made coordinating, tracking, and providing emergency preparedness training to executive-level teams a lot easier. Kantak also stated that the convenience of the printable certificates, and user-friendly reporting features, has been valuable. The DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has recently begun to use SiTEL for 5,000 of its members. In a short time, administrators have not only seen improvements in efficiency, but reductions in cost as well. MPD Assistant Chief of Police Joshua Ederheimer says that one of the benefits of using SiTEL is how quickly staff can be notified of new procedures, and cited the new DC gun legislation as their first educational blast using this Web-based tool. “In the old days, it would have been a paper exercise where we would produce 5,000 photocopies of the legislation and hope that people read it. Now, we have something a lot more interesting, and we can also track who has watched the learning module,” explained Ederheimer. With benefits ranging from reductions in travel and administrative costs to increases in content retention and tracking, it is clear why more people are moving toward this virtual alternative. What SiTEL does is simple; it fills a critical need for accessible, concise training and education within a customizable learning management system. For more information, visit SiTEL Health Care. |
