Even the ambulance service uses the interactive voting keypads!
Training procedures for the acquisition and updating of skills and knowledge are the subject of ever greater attention, not only in the private sector, but also for local governmental institutions.
This is particularly true in such important sectors as emergency medical assistance. For this reason, a year and a half ago, this Emergency Assistance and Rescue Service turned to interactive voting keypads for the training of its own technicians, as well as of outside groups.
This tool provides flexibility and fun, while favouring greater involvement on the part of personnel keen to learn new skills.
Since the Service’s creation in 1992, in the same form with which we are today familiar, training has increased considerably in importance. The ever greater necessity for a service that can deal quickly and effectively with emergency health situations occurring on public driveways has turned the attention of the Ambulance service’s directors to the continuing training of their institution’s personnel: “Training that targets the acquisition and updating of skills and knowledge with regard to emergency medical assistance,” explains the Director of Training.
However, in addition to in-house training for doctors and health workers, the Ambulance service also provides training to outside groups. This has led those responsible for training to express the necessity to locate multifunctional and more flexible tools for teaching GPs, medical professionals and volunteers new skills with regard to emergency medical assistance.
“We realised that in order to render the training procedures more flexible and improve learning acquisition, we needed to make use of new technologies, namely interactive devices such as electronic voting keypads that facilitate the transfer of data and make the training sessions more dynamic,” he explains.
The voting keypads are used in a traditional manner at the Ambulance service: “We usually carry out a preliminary evaluation at the beginning of the course, by asking a series of questions, and ask another series of questions at the end of the session.”
Greater participation
The use of electronic voting keypads since 2008 for training has allowed instructors to rapidly evaluate knowledge acquisition thanks to the system’s simplicity. Before beginning a session, questions and answers are programmed to later be displayed as part of a PowerPoint presentation. Once programmed, the voting keypads are passed out to the participants and each time a vote is made, the system’s software programme displays the results.
That is why, according to the Director of Training, the voting keypads encourage greater student participation within the institution’s training courses. The fact that no one who expresses their opinion need do it in public or openly results in a much higher answer rate than when other survey methods are used. “With the voting keypads, almost 100% of students answer the questions they are asked,” he insists.
In addition to this anonymity made possible by technology, voting keypads boast yet another advantage, according to the Director of Training: “They allow us to compile – on condition that the students are previously made aware of the procedure – all data concerning each individual participant, with their full name.” What is more, the use of voting keypads means instructors no longer need correct their exams nor – and this is an important point – use paper, he adds.
Spreading their use
As the department offers its in-house and external training days on a continual basis, it decided to purchase 130 voting keypads in the second semester of 2007.
The director of training admits that the voting keypads have not yet been incorporated into all training courses, because “before giving their classes, the instructors must provide us with their series of questions, so that they can be entered into the system. This necessitates additional preparation time,” he explains.
That said, the Director of Training insists that the results have been excellent for those courses that have made use of the electronic PowerVote voting keypads.
Even if, for the time being, the electronic PowerVote voting keypads have only been used for training sessions, the SAMUR intends to extend their use to other situations. “We would like to use the system for all types of meetings, for it has proven itself to be the ideal means of gathering participants’ opinions rapidly and collectively.”
About the SAMUR
The service was created as a pilot project in June 1991. Later, in December 1992 and after having proven its usefulness, it was decided to attribute to this service the “Health Transport Section” category. The goal of this service is to quickly and effectively deal with emergency health situations liable to occur on the public road network.
Tags : ambulance service, interactive voting keypads, powerpoint presentation, SAMUR, Training
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