Video Conferencing for Training

[tddowney]

I live in a rural area served by a volunteer EMS company. Our medical director is based out of a hospital 55 miles away.

It would certainly make life easier to have the ability to video conference for training with the medical director and other qualified instructors. Especially in the winter, when roads tend to be icy, covered with windshield cracking sand and gravel, or strewn with deer and elk.

Is anyone using distance learning in this way? What is your experience with it? Is it an effective learning technique?

How about equipment and costs?

Your thoughts and experience will be appreciated.

[wyobow]

I love the Seeley Lake area. In fact, I'll be up there in a week or so to do some skiing at Big Mountain...

We're in a rural area in Wyoming and have the same problem. Our public health nursing system got a grant for distance learning and asked if they could use our facilities to implement the system. As it turned out, there weren't many programs available on that system that applied to EMS and our council didn't think it was a good idea to have people un-associated with our service using our facilities. Anyway, we didn't do it, but if EMS programs would have been available through that system, we certainly would have. If you have a hospital or other EMS system that regularly does classes, you could set up a link with them to do distance learning with. The equipment can be very expensive and done via satellite or it can be quite simple and done over a simple Internet connection. The only constant is that you have to have some source to provide the training with a similar or workable setup. There are grants available to provide this type of training in rural areas that would be worth looking into.

Lectures in this manner are very worthwhile and effective. Hands on training can be tougher unless you have the appropriate materials on hand to work with. Highly visual presentations can be tough as well. Two way communication with the trainer is critical obviously so that questions can be asked and answered.

Good luck with it.

[Bones42]

Go to www.Webex.com They have software that is designed for this and there is very little investment on the end user side. There is some involved with the hosting side but if they do enough training it may be worth it.