Discover how FrontLine Communication achieved exceptional impact and success through a strategic transition to blended learning.
Introduction to FrontLine
Healthcare professionals face unique communication difficulties. A critical aspect of their work entails informing patients and close family of life-threatening illnesses and their complex treatments. This involves such conversations as telling a woman she has stage 4 breast cancer, when she was expecting stage 2. Skills such as expressing empathy and active listening are therefore essential to effective healthcare. FrontLine’s courses teach professionals how to handle these conversations through evidence-based models and intensive live training. These courses lead to ripple effects throughout the healthcare system improving thousands of patient outcomes.
The Problem…
When the pandemic hit, the demand for communications training skyrocketed, as NHS was faced with more critically ill patients than ever before.
But despite of this unprecedented demand, FrontLine was unable to deliver their face-to-face workshops and courses due to social restrictions. The team started experimenting with online delivery, making videos demonstrating different communications skills, and slowly embarked on transitioning their content into an online course. This is when they came across aNewSpring, the e-learning platform delivered by Inmisceo as the solution to their problem.
The Solution…
What started as an initial exploration into the blended space resulted in an opportunity for transformation. FrontLine transfigured all aspects of their learning provision including facilitator training, learner engagement, learning environment, interactive and experiential multi-media, and delivery structure. The key to their success was the ability to take control quickly. Inmisceo rapidly onboarded the FrontLine team with expert guidance so they could immediately start creating the courses they wanted. The platform, aNewSpring, allowed them to tailor the course to their exact specifications, enabling them to design around needs of healthcare professionals. Formal tests were replaced with self-reflection sections, prompting professionals to assess their practice through prompts such as ‘which skills do you feel are your strengths?’. All video content was created by the team at FrontLine from scratch. They developed a new facilitation structure involving one-to-one sessions between a facilitator and a delegate to calm nerves before the online workshop began.
The Impact
The blended course has now been running for three years, and the results are in. The impact is greater than ever before. The online format increased scalability, increasing course attendance by an incredible 359% from pre-pandemic levels, with 780 participants booked to do the course in 2024 so far.
‘In end-of-life situations where there are no treatment paths available, the communication is the healthcare’, this increase in attendance will make a major impact on patients.
Leading healthcare specialists consistently attest to FrontLine’s impact, saying that those who have been on the course act and behave differently. One senior ward assistant stated that after taking the course they ‘now walk towards the angry patient because I know I can do something’, a sentiment reflected in the data as 92% state they feel confident and skilled to handle conversations. We can also see this in the pre, and post-course questionnaires, which measure a 31% confidence increase across various questions from challenging colleagues about their behaviour to discussing psychological problems with patients.
Ask us for the full case study.