Elsevier Online Training Reaches Rural Hospitals in Idaho
Dana Herndon, Sales Associate, Elsevier, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
When the Institute for Rural Health purchased MD Consult and FIRST Consult in September 2003, 10 Idaho hospitals participated. They were accessing these products through the TelIda Toolbox, their online web portal. At the time of purchase, the institute hosted a daylong training session for librarians and administrators on Idaho State University’s campus. To lead the session, I traveled from Saint Louis, Missouri to Pocatello, Idaho. Many hospital staff drove five hours or more to this training.
In 2004, the institute for Rural Health added 27 additional hospitals and eight rural community health centers to the original 10 hospitals already with service. These hospitals were spread from the panhandle of Idaho to the border of Utah. This geographic reach (500 miles north to south and 300 miles east to west) presented a challenge to the training team.
Working with the Institute for Rural Health, I set up two Web-based training sessions for all 37 participating hospitals. Each training session lasted one hour, and librarians and administrators from different hospitals attended both sessions. When logging into the online training, each participating hospital had either a committee present or individuals sitting behind their desks and utilizing their own computers. I was able to cover each service or content area of MD Consult and FIRST Consult, and present real-life scenarios as examples of the products.
Today, rural hospitals in Idaho have access to a tremendous amount of clinical content that was once not available in the rural setting. Using the power of Web-conferencing, Elsevier was able to reach each of these hospitals and conduct training in a two-hour time span.
Feedback on the training has been very positive. "The Web-based training has been an invaluable tool to bring training to our partner hospitals and community health centers,” explained Stephen Weeg, Executive Director, Telehealth Idaho. “Given our distances and geography, it would be extremely difficult and expensive to reach each site. The participants responded positively to the training and the wealth of health information that is now available to them."
We’d like to thank the Institute of Rural Health Idaho for creating a vision to reach the rural hospital community with comprehensive clinical information! 
Any Elsevier customer interested in arranging Web-based, live training - led by a product expert - may contact an Account Development Manager or sales representative or email us at libraryconnect@elsevier.com. Private online training sessions, tailored to the needs of specific groups of librarians, researchers or practitioners, are available in a variety of languages.
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