Distance no factor for Continuing Nursing Education

When the UNMC College of Nursing’s Office of Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) held the Annual Pharmacological Conference for Advanced Practice Nurses in July, it drew 140 nurses to the Omaha campus.

But the conference itself drew 286 nurses.

Heidi Keeler, Ph.D., interim director of Continuing Nursing Education

The CNE office has been using distance learning to fulfill its mission of reaching and equipping nurses across the state to practice with the latest evidence-based information, but July was the first time that distance learners — attending the conference remotely at one of the four College of Nursing sites across the state of Nebraska — outnumbered those who attended the “physical” conference.

The growing number of distance learners is a huge achievement, said Heidi Keeler, Ph.D., interim director of CNE. The office has been working to improve the “overall learner experience” for distance learners.

“Our planning committee did a lot of research, and we narrowed it down to a couple of key things. First of all, you need to have the technology to not just deliver the information, but also to allow for interactivity, because it’s essential for people to be able to ask questions, to feel like they have the same access to the experts as those that are live,” she said.

The office has hosts and planning committee members at each location to oversee IP video presentation and logistics.

“Considering that we are an accredited provider by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, we have to make sure the conference not only meets user experience expectations, but also that it meets accreditation criteria,” Dr. Keeler said. “There are forms that need to get distributed at each location, there are sign-in sheets, there is information that we have to collect, and there is also an online evaluation process that we have to run in order to make sure that we collect essential data from each location.”

The attendees’ overall experience is also important, so concerns such as food, beverages, break times and other considerations are carefully planned out and tailored to each location.

The result, she said, has been “more reach — reaching out to each location and making education much more convenient and enjoyable to the learners,” an especially important accomplishment for an office tasked with providing continuing education opportunities to nurses statewide.

“It is hard to manage these things from a distance,” Dr. Keeler said. “We really have to concentrate on every aspect of the logistical details to make sure that it runs as smoothly as it can.”