Innovative solutions using online interactive, adaptive technologies to promote well-being and resilience in healthcare providers and students amidst the chaos caused by COVID-19

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting health care institutions and is disrupting the training of future healthcare providers at a time when it is more important than ever to ensure that the educators and students have access to high-quality educational materials and technologies to ensure trainee preparedness for clinical and global health challenges. During this disruption, healthcare teachers are feeling a profound professional loss and burnout due to the challenges of losing their familiar means of teaching and adapting to totally online course delivery. Teachers also struggle to motivate their students through two layers of computer screens. To meet this challenge, online tools have become a viable option with the recent development of information technology. Online learning or E-learning can be used to enhance a classroom course, or as a stand-alone course. These online tools include online labs, videos, high resolution images (X-ray, CT-scan, histology), cadaver labs and adaptive, interactive technology such as practice exams, virtual patients, and learning games. At its core, such systems are intended to identify what a student does and doesn’t understand, identify and provide content that will help the student learn, assess again, help again, etc., until some defined learning goal is achieved. One of its greatest potentials is to target instruction at just above the student’s ability level (to challenge but not discourage the student) and at the student’s specific content needs. Objective: The increasing number of online teaching tools and fast pace of new technology becomes an over-whelming learning curve for the healthcare teacher who must quickly adapt to online teaching. This paper will describe how this author used interactive online resources to deliver an online course in anatomy and physiology, including self-directed modules and learning activities that could be converted to virtual interactions. It will showcase the technology that is available and how to incorporate it into existing courses to utilize what research has shown increases student acceptance and learning outcomes. Methods: A literature review was conducted on the reported research of utilizing on-line, interactive, adaptive technology in healthcare education. In addition, e-learning tools were incorporated into medical education courses taught by the author in online courses. Results: The assessment of suitability revealed that interactive online tools, online cadaver lab and subject-specific assignments for teaching medicine were predominantly viewed as constructive teaching tools. A strong causative factor in improved learning was the interactive, adaptive portions of the e-learning tools. Conclusion: The understanding, study, and use of e-learning educational tools, their place in the hype cycle, and their application in the education of healthcare providers are increasingly important. There is no single solution in moving forward with innovative teaching and learning techniques. Technology changes and advances, learners come in all types and learning styles as do faculty, and time and money are almost always at odds with the day to day operations. However, taking a step and trying out even one new technique, technology, or training experience can create a huge step in a new direction to improving healthcare education even more dramatically over the next decade and assist the stressed out healthcare teacher with delivering effective teaching outcomes and motivating her students in an online teaching situation