E-health as a life long learning process: how to prepare health professionals for this journey.

BACKGROUND

The e-health environment is a rapidly changing one. To effectively engage with technology for healthcare delivery, health professionals must be able to adapt to this constantly evolving environment very quickly. Learning and adapting to new e-health technologies is a life-long learning process.

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the effectiveness of incorporating self-directed and transformative learning approaches to introduce health sciences students to e-health concepts and skills.

METHODS

Two surveys were conducted to measure students' e-health knowledge and their perceived self-efficacy in using commonly available software to complete tasks required for an assessment in the unit of study. These surveys were conducted at the beginning and the end of the semester. Paired t-tests with Bonferroni adjustment were used to examine the effect of the teaching approach on students' self-perceived efficacy.

RESULTS

It was found that students showed significant improvement in their knowledge of, and perceived efficacy in using, commonly available software to carry out spreadsheet, database and data manipulation operations after intervention.

CONCLUSION

This study shows that the combined self-directed and transformative teaching and learning approach is effective in helping students to identify their learning needs and develop skills to seek out resources that enable them to learn new e-health skills and concepts in a self-directed manner.