Bolus: Targeted Specialist Haematology Education
Authors: Thomas Sonia , Jordan Sarah , Cooper Gavin , Rowley Stephen D , Clare Simon 
Published: November 2019

Introduction

We believe that better informed clinicians make better clinical decisions. Healthcare technology and innovation moves as fast as the rising expectations of patients. Keeping clinical knowledge up-to-date is an ever-present challenge. Often, clinicians' day-to-day experience can only provide a narrow viewpoint of a haematology patient's journey; sometimes this lacks the wider context of new therapies and advancements in treatment modalities. Formal teaching opportunities can be infrequent, difficult to organise, complicated to facilitate and require time and financial commitments many organisations can't support.

Background

Floor-based teaching is a time-tested way of keeping staff updated but it has to be repeated many times to reach a significant number of staff. Technologies like eLearning are expensive and time consuming to design, deploy and maintain; what is needed is a flexible, efficient contemporary solution for continuing professional development. Podcast technology, whilst not new, has not been fully explored as a core learning solution in healthcare. Surveying haematology staff (n=120) at University College Hospital in London, 80% of respondents (70, 58%) identified a suggested Podcast education delivery method as a desirable way to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in specialist haematology care.

Methods

A small team of senior clinical staff and practice educators assembled to develop the Podcast resource using inexpensive and easy to use equipment. Clinical experts in particular fields were recruited to deliver content in a conversational style. The format allows a host, to ask questions of the expert based partly on user feedback and partly on historical educational deficits. Primarily aimed at nursing staff and junior doctors, the podcasts have attracted a much wider audience of clinical staff. The resource became formally named, 'Bolus - Education Delivered Stat' and editions were released via popular podcast applications online. Prospective evaluation surveys were given to the clinical workforce to provide intelligence on Bolus's reception with staff and evaluate the effectiveness of the delivery method. The first season featured episodes from professors and senior consultants on the latest developments in Immunotherapy and CAR T cells, updates on Myelodysplastic Syndromes, and specialist overviews of Lymphoma and allogeneic transplantation.

Evaluation

The Podcast team monitors listening statistics, produced by the web hosting service. The response has been unexpectedly good with >4,000 total downloads, from countries around the world (table 1), in less than two months. User evaluation survey data reports improved knowledge and increased confidence across all employee groups. Respondents identified a number of key areas that we will reported on including: accessibility, time management, resource utility and content relevance.

Conclusion

The Podcast format is a surprisingly viable, effective and, importantly, cost-effective education solution which has the potential to educate large groups of clinical staff across global geographical locations. The 30-minute Podcasts can be listened to anywhere and on a variety of formats and devices. The delivery method is flexible and targets specialist knowledge on-demand at a time and place that best accommodates learners' needs.

Disclosures

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.