Continuing online education to health workforce: elderly’s health care training experience

Abstract

Background The Open University of the Unified Health System (UNA-SUS) was created in 2010 to promote continuing professional education using online distance education (ODE) to Brazilian health workforce - mainly primary care – spread over 8.5 million kilometers. It comprehends a 34-universities network developing free open technology-enhanced courses and has more than 3 million enrollments and 1 million single learners, covering 98% of the country's cities. Objectives Elderly's Health Care Educational Program aims to improve professional education for public health workers, focused on aged people's care, based in 5 independent microlearning courses developed in the past 2 years. It follows “action mapping” design, in which the action objectives and practice demands are defined before content, meeting real-world demands, intending to improve completion rates (CR) as well as modeling continuing education in world's health systems. Results These ODE courses were available for 18 months (2018-2019), with 66,655 enrollments and 36,714(55%) certificated; CR ranged from 46.4% to 70.5% among 15 health professions and “students”, being higher for Community Health Agents (70.5%) and Nursing Technicians (65,4%). Enrollments were from all 5 Brazilian regions, mean age was 32.6 years, 81.6% were female. Conclusions Instructional design allowed professionals to learn according to specific gaps; microlearning strategy promoted higher CR compared to traditional ODE courses. High school and technical educational levels also had higher CR suggesting that ODE can be adequate to this target audience, who possibly have less educational opportunities than graduated ones. Considering the success obtained in a continental-size country, this model could be reproduced worldwide. Key messages Continuing ODE is a worldwide demand. Initiatives that use information technology to improve learning process of health professionals, including healthcare technicians, should be considered.