Continuing education on the Internet for the skilled nursing industry: Creation of a subject area guide

This project examined and evaluated Web-based continuing education courses for administrators, nurses, and therapists in the skilled nursing field. A Web site, an evaluative subject area guide to Web-based continuing education courses and discussion LIST resources, was created and published on the Internet for the professional public. Courses and LISTs were located through search engines and industry referrals from December 12, 1997 through January 30, 1998. Continuing education for professional practice and evaluation criteria for electronic media were used as conceptual frameworks. The guide URL was announced February 8, 1998, and listed with a rating of 5 of 5 by the Argus Clearinghouse on March 16, 1998. Site access data were monitored electronically for a 30-day period. First level information pages and number of visits were: home page (1147), about the author (204), about LISTs (198), guestbook (133). Visits to second level directory pages to continuing education resources by practice area were: nursing (464), therapy (232) and administrators (163). Aggregate visits to third level pages, the individual resource evaluations, were 903. Visitors preferred Netscape browser (65%), WIN95 operating system (79%), and 14% visited more than once. Of the 25 countries of visitor origin, most frequent were Canada (28%), USA (15%), Switzerland (20%), UK (9%), Japan (8%), Australia (6%). Between 2% and 5% were from Israel, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, and Malaysia. Comments from industry experts and site visitors indicated the guide was a useful tool enabling twenty-four hour access to continuing education for health care professionals, and that the site could easily be used as a demonstration example when teaching health care professionals about Internet resources. Recommendations include technology and Web literacy initiatives by professional organizations and institutions to promote Web use and access by health care practitioners, guidelines for Web-course developers and programmers for design and delivery of Web-based continuing education, and collegial participation in continuing education opportunities across nations.