Authors (including presenting author) :
Yung WS, Hui Y, Wong KO
Affiliation :
Hospital Authority of Institute of Health Care, Cluster Services Division, HAHO
Introduction :
The endless disruptions by COVID-19 pandemic posed various daunting challenges to all Hospital Authority (HA) training units which upholding staff career-related training. While the traditional in-person classes were restricted due to the requirements of keeping social distance and limiting people from mass gathering, all trainings were either postponed or cancelled since February of 2020. This posed a managerial challenge to training organizers and posed risks due to the lack of training to HA staff.
Objectives :
The Hospital Authority of Institute of Health Care (HAIHC) dedicated its resources to develop a best practice guideline of setting-up a “Zoom" remote learning class to address this urgent need by shifting from in-person training to online mode of pedagogy.
Methodology :
Riding on the momentum of in-house adoption of the web session system, “Zoom”, HAIHC developed a proof of concept (POC) class and had undergone for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) in April 2020. This POC class was based on actual training, and with its unit perspectives and requirements in order to identify all relevant features in the “Zoom” system specific for teaching and learning practices. Then, HAIHC worked with clinical-staff, technical-staff, and administrative-staff to establish a step-by-step guide, including training strategies, preparatory samples for planning and class-structures, instructions on setting up rehearsal and live run, was published and made available since May 2020. This guideline not only instructs on how to set up “Zoom-type” classes, but also guides instructors and participants on how to access and cover major curriculum content via various e-learning tools in Zoom to achieve their teaching and learning objectives.
Result & Outcome :
The enhanced programme for case manager in community psychiatry was piloted to resume in early June 2020, and all training activities were soon followed this online mode of pedagogy. As the pedagogical and technical competency of training partners are vital to the success of the training, HAIHC would continue to enhance this best practice guideline.
As a result, the overall resumption rate of collaborating training programmes had been increased to 80-90% since Q42020. The online mode of pedagogy is not perfect, but it mitigates the risk of spreading COVID-19 and achieve the learning objectives simultaneously.
