Title: Towards learning organisations with telemedicine

Authors: I. H. Monrad Aas

Addresses: The Work Research Institute, PO Box 6954, St. Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: For the post-industrial society, the knowledge and information society, learning is an important activity. We speak about learning organisations and even a learning society. In healthcare, dissemination of knowledge may be a tool for improving patient care. Working with telemedicine has been proposed to result in learning, but research on this is limited. To investigate learning in telemedicine, a study was performed with qualitative interviews of 30 persons working with telepsychiatry, teledermatology, a telepathology frozen-section service, and teleotolaryngology. The results clearly show that working with telemedicine provides learning. More than 80% of the respondents revealed that they had learnt something new by using telemedicine and had improved their knowledge of their specialty as well as other areas. All GPs said they had learnt something new, as well as nurses, psychologists, other categories of personnel, and even medical specialists. When all within psychiatry report that they have learnt something new, the future learning potential of telemedicine looks promising for psychiatry. Two-thirds of the respondents could not tell that the learning made them perform tasks for which they previously needed assistance, but the answers may have been dependent on the type of telemedical work and the educational background of the respondents. Two-thirds of the respondents thought that something more could be done in telemedical work to promote their own learning, which shows the clear potential for learning by telemedicine. To start working with telemedicine initial instruction seems to be sufficient; a more extensive training programme appears unnecessary. In future, with many applications of telemedicine implemented, healthcare organisations may become important arenas for learning and leaders will have to focus on learning.

Keywords: healthcare; learning organisations; patient care; telemedicine; telepsychiatry; teledermatology; telepathology; teleotolaryngology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2004.004820

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2004 Vol.6 No.1, pp.108 - 120

Published online: 07 Jul 2004 *

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