Over the last few years, the healthcare industry has faced an unprecedented number of challenges: staffing shortages, worker burnout, financial strain, and a growing number of cyberattacks have challenged the industry as a whole.

Learning and development (L&D) professionals in the healthcare industry can help with these challenges, but doing so isn’t always easy. Healthcare workers are often overworked, healthcare organizations are understaffed, and in many cases, medical organizations are underfunded. To make an impact, L&D must be strategic about delivering training to healthcare organizations.

Factors for success in training healthcare workers

Learning must be relevant

It’s important to assess your training needs when designing any learning program, and healthcare is no different. Learner time is at a premium in healthcare settings, so you want to make sure you’re efficiently delivering the training your organization needs, wasting no time on redundant, outdated, or ineffective learning.

There are many factors that need to be kept in mind when creating an L&D program for a healthcare organization, such as regulatory requirements, safety and security, new technology, and skill gaps. Leverage data to identify gaps in these critical areas, such as feedback from learners, managers, and patients. Once you know where the gaps are, you can create targeted learning content that helps to close them.

Learning must fit into busy schedules

Healthcare workers don’t have a lot of extra time for training. This has been true for years, but it’s particularly important now that many healthcare organizations are short-staffed. According to a recent ATD survey, 75% of respondents report being at least moderately affected by the healthcare staffing shortage, for example.

The shortage not only affects employers, but also healthcare workers who are currently in the field; in 2022, 266,900 healthcare workers reported working overtime, while a recent study found that more than half of U.S. health workers feel stressed, overworked, and ready to leave their jobs.

With so much on their plates, training must fit easily into your learners’ workdays. Consider approaches such as microlearning — bite-sized modules that deliver a short burst of intense training on one subject — or just-in-time learning, which gives learners the information they need exactly when they need it.

Think of learning like a meal. Rather than asking your workforce to have a five-course lunch in the middle of the day — a long in-person workshop, for example — you can offer nutritious learning snacks whenever hunger strikes. These relevant, applicable microlearning or just-in-time resources can be consumed and digested in the moment, without interrupting the flow of work.”

Learning should be accessible from any device

Healthcare workers are often on their feet, running from one assignment to the next. If you expect them to be able to sit down at a computer and log into a course, you may end up being disappointed. If you’re delivering your training in a classroom setting (ATD found that 8% of respondents to their survey deliver all their training live and, in a classroom), you may also have trouble finding time to schedule training while covering shifts.

To ensure that all employees can access your learning, it’s important to make it available in a variety of formats, especially mobile learning. This means learning can reach your learners where they are, whether they’re taking a break during the day or learning when they’re off the clock.

Training makes healthcare more agile

Healthcare is an industry used to performance under pressure. The sector transformed itself to deal with the realities of the pandemic: medical practitioners learned to use telehealth technology, hospitals changed their processes dramatically, and personnel learned new procedures. Learning played a huge part in that transformation.

While the pressures of the last few years have eased, the industry is still under strain. By providing relevant, engaging, and accessible learning, the healthcare field can continue to support its working while improving patient care.