Automating Training of Medical Personnel in Numerous Institutions
Case of Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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About SAEM
The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) is committed to improving the care of acutely ill and injured patients through improved research and education. To accomplish this mission, SAEM influences health policy through forums, publications, inter-organizational collaboration, policy development, and advisory services for physicians, educators, researchers, and students. SAEM stands for excellence and leadership in academic emergency medicine. Its values include idealism and quality in all endeavors, development, camaraderie, diversity among its members, and creative and symbiotic relationships with other organizations.
In live events, communication happens instantaneously. This makes it easy for students to get answers and clarify points of confusion. On the other hand, in an e-learning setting, communication is often indirect. Meaning there’s a gap between the teacher and the student. It’s easy for misunderstandings to develop. And with confusion spreading, problems tend to pile up and become unbearable. Furthermore, after enrolling in distance learning courses, many learners fall behind. They begin to nurture the idea of giving up and begin to feel uncomfortable in mediums used for e-learning. This lack of discipline then leads to a lack of overall interest. Constant distractions are not helping either, as they disrupt the flow and daily routine. This leads to poorer time management, which then again leads to even less motivation. Finally, there’s the issue of technical difficulties, which may manifest in many forms. Even the simplest tasks become a challenge if there is no systematic approach and a well-implemented schedule.
Challenge
As more hospitals joined SAEM, the need for a seamless testing experience was growing rapidly. In emergency medicine, time is of the essence, and SAEM needed a reliable testing solution for their teams.
The requirements were:
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- Sustaining tens of thousands of active users
- The ability for a large number of users to take the tests at the same time
- Storing all relevant information from different medical institutions in a centralized database
- Ensuring that managers of one medical institution can only see data from their institutions
- Ensuring that candidates can only access tests
- The ability for students to do the practice tests as many times as they want
- Allowing candidates to take the tests when they see fit
- Generating reports for evaluating questions (items) in tests using point-biserial correlation
Solution
YouTestMe worked closely with the SAEM team to find the best solution that would fit their scenario. Today, they have 2,000 to 4,000 test attempts monthly and 36,000 users. Different medical institutions use the application, and each institution has its administrator. One hospital’s manager doesn’t see candidates from other hospitals, but they’re all doing the same test. This means that each medical institution is independent, but all employees from all institutions have the same practice test that should prepare them for the official one. Tests consist of single-choice and multiple-choice questions enriched with appropriate multimedia content. SAEM administrators get support from the YouTestMe support team, and they are able to support the candidates themselves.
For this scenario to be possible, the YouTestMe development team created a new user role called “institutional admin”. In this case, an admin is a manager of a single medical institution. Their candidates are taking the same test as all the other 36,000, but they, as managers, can only access reports and results of students belonging to their institution. “Super admin” can see the data from all institutions and, therefore, can examine reports on the level of all medical institutions in the system.
