Roche E-learning Package Helps Hospitals Meet CPA Standards

As Point of Care (POC) testing increases in healthcare facilities, it is essential to ensure that POC users are competent in using their equipment. The Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA) standards for POC testing, call for POC testing facilities to demonstrate adequate training and recertification of operators.

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has 85 Accu-Check® Inform II blood glucose meters and six cobas® b221 blood gas analyzers installed across the Trust. The analyzers are linked to the cobas IT POC data management solution which allows them to be monitored and managed centrally. The hospital has adopted the cobas® academy e-learning tool from Roche to help meet these CPA requirements.

With around 1700 operators for glucose testing alone, POC Coordinator, Anne Penrice sees the advantages of using cobas academy e-learning to help deliver a high standard of training to POC users.“We have a huge number of staff that we need to train and retrain,” she comments. “This is an enormous task if it is all done face to face. It’s very difficult for staff to come off the wards. cobas academy e-learning provides a way to engage staff in training without them needing to leave the wards. They can access it whenever it is quieter and they have time to fit it in, so it is much more convenient for them.”

“We originally started using cobas academy e-learning for the glucose meters in December 2010,” she continues. “The package is used by anyone who has received initial training, ranging from matrons to health care assistants, in order to maintain competency. We still need to have some face to face training, but the majority of users are now able to be re-certified through cobas academy e-learning. We are now rolling out the cobas academy e-learning for re-certification of blood gas analyser operators.”

The cobas academy e-learning offers a full online training programme, including video training clips and further testing information. The system provides the POC Coordinator with a comprehensive overview of each operator’s competence profile and enables trainers to identify strengths and areas for further development.

“I like that cobas academy includes the whole training process from start to finish,” continues Anne. “It delivers the information for training; an exam, which provides reassurance that the users have learned sufficiently; re-certification; and then, through cobas IT 1000, we can also control whether users can access equipment. Without cobas academy, all of this would need to be done manually. So it saves time for me and I know that operators are receiving consistent training.”