Abstract
National standards act as levers to improve the quality of health and social care services. Lack of knowledge and understanding has been identified as a barrier to implementation of standards into practice. As such, there has been a move internationally towards the development of tools and resources to support implementation. However, there is little literature describing the development or evaluation of such tools. The health and social care standards setting body in Ireland (Health Information and Quality Authority) has developed online learning courses, as a tool to support staff in health and social care services to adopt national standards into their daily practice by increasing their knowledge and understanding of the standards and their role in applying them in practice. Analysis of evaluations of these online learning courses informed this case study, which aimed to describe the development, dissemination and uptake of online learning courses and to examine the effectiveness of three of these online learning courses. In post-completion evaluations staff reported an increased understanding of the topic and also an intention to change their practice. The results indicate that where knowledge and understanding is identified as a key barrier to the implementation of standards, online learning courses are an effective tool to address this barrier and support the adoption of standards in health and social care services.
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Recommended Citation
McCarthy, Shauna; Connolly, Deirdre; Weir, Linda; O'Connor, Laura; and O'Rourke, Niamh
(2020)
"Using Online Learning Courses as a Tool to Support Implementation of National Standards: A Case Study,"
Journal of Social Care:
Vol. 3, Article 9.
Available at:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/jsoc/vol3/iss1/9