Award-winning cancer eLearning resource supporting cancer care professionals worldwide
Overview of the program
The Cancer Institute NSW’s eviQ program supports cancer care professionals with keeping their skills up to date so they can deliver safe, evidence-based cancer care to patients. eviQ Education eLearning resources are developed in partnership with clinical experts to ensure their accuracy and relevance for point of care.
eviQ Education has a suggested structured online learning pathway to support health professionals to build their knowledge and clinical skills. These pathways are customisable, catering for local facilities’ learning and development requirements and for different multidisciplinary health professionals, including nurses, pharmacists, allied health radiation oncologists and other medical professionals.
As of June 2024, the learning pathway comprised of seven core eLearning resources (with 86 supporting resources). This includes courses with foundational information about cancers, common treatments and how to administer them, and clinical issues that a health professional may encounter during clinical practice.
Health professionals can access the resources as they need them, enabling them to tailor their learning to their professional needs.
Link to NSW Cancer Plan
The eviQ Education program supports the delivery of safe, high-quality cancer care in line with the NSW Cancer Plan’s priority 3: To provide optimal cancer treatment, care and support, and the overarching principle of collaboration. It further aligns to the Future Health strategic outcome 4: Our staff are engaged and well supported.
Evaluation methodology
The learning pathway was evaluated to assess its appropriateness and effectiveness – specifically focusing on version 4 of the Anti-cancer Drug Administration Course (ADAC) and the co-design approach with subject matter experts.
A mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis was undertaken, drawing from existing qualitative and quantitative program data between 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, where available.
The evaluation explored three key themes being course reach and usage, experience of providing and receiving patient care, and improving health outcomes through engagement and co-design.
Key findings
Course reach and usage
The eviQ Education learning pathway reached its intended audience (Australian healthcare professionals) with a significant increase in engagement and usage seen year on year. While not a specific target, the learning pathway also has expansive international reach.
Audience breakdown:
- Australia 81% of total users
- New Zealand 5%
- International (over 170 countries) 14%
Users and sessions (July 2023 – June 2024):
- 181,007 users
- 437,706 sessions
- 30% increase on previous year
Most viewed content:
- ADAC (up 53% on previous year)
- ADAC non-cancer (up 96% on previous year)
- Central Venous Access Devices (CVADs) (up 19% on previous year)
“For over a decade, ADAC has equipped thousands of nurses with the skills, knowledge and expertise to deliver safe care. Adult ADAC is a trusted, evidence-based eLearning course, embedded in most hospitals across Australia and New Zealand"
– Rachel Edwards, Paediatric nurse SME, eviQ Education
As learning resources continue to be embedded into both the Australian and New Zealand health system, eviQ Education continues to grow as the leader in providing quality online cancer learning resources.
Within Australia and New Zealand, the learning pathway has been extensively embedded into 352 cancer centres and is considered mandatory training in many facilities, having been embedded into organisational Learning Management Systems (LMS).
In February 2024, the Clinical Excellence Commission High-Risk Medicine Standard was updated, recommending ADAC for completion by healthcare professionals to mitigate risks associated with anti-cancer medicine use. Across NSW Health, adherence to this standard is mandatory for all anti-cancer medicines used for cancer care, and ADAC was launched in the NSW Statewide LMS in June 2023 for NSW Health staff.
"The [ADAC Pharmacy] PAD course is a highly educative one … The modules are broken down in a way that is easy to understand for any pharmacist new to the oncology field or as a refresher for experienced pharmacists… I would strongly recommend it to colleagues looking to expand their knowledge."
- Clinical Pharmacist, international learner
ADAC is also embedded in other LMS platforms, including the McGrath Foundation nurse navigator learning model and the International Society of Oncology Pharmacy Practitioners LMS. This increases the reach and use of ADAC by health professionals and eliminates the need for services to create bespoke anti-cancer drug training, saving time and resources associated with development, while ensuring consistency in care and less practice variation.
Improving the experience of providing and receiving patient care
Elements of the learning pathway, specifically CVADs, extravasation (the unintentional instillation or leakage of a drug or solution out of the blood stream into surrounding tissue), and ADAC learning resources, significantly demonstrated an increase in health professionals’ knowledge of evidence-based treatment and care to inform clinical practice.
97% of users who completed the CVAD course and 97% of users who completed the extravasation course reported an increase in knowledge on core topics.
Of the users for each course, 44% reported their knowledge increased ‘considerably’ and 34% increased ‘greatly’.
"Well structured information, excellent for refreshing and improving my knowledge. Knowledge checking questions helped to consolidate knowledge and helped keep my focus."
- Learner, CVADs Course
Of users who completed ADAC version 4, 98% agreed that the knowledge they’ve gained from the course will enable them to improve, or potentially improve, clinical practice and patient safety in their workplace.
The success of this world-class, education pathway supports the continued drive towards standardised delivery of care for patients receiving anti-cancer drugs.
"Thank you for all of the work done at eviQ [Education], as a chemotherapy nurse and invasive devices educator, I cannot speak more highly of your education resources for both clinicians and patients. Your work has a big impact on maintaining patient safety and the provision of quality care."
- Invasive Devices Clinical Educator
In 2024, ADAC was recognised at the international LearnX awards with four from four diamond awards for its innovative design, including interactive content (videos, case studies and learning exercises) developed to suit the needs of clinical learners.
Improving health outcomes through engagement and co-design
eviQ Education has effectively engaged and collaborated with key stakeholders to co-design learning pathway resources. This has led to content being reflective of clinician needs, clinical relevance and incorporate credible evidence-based learning resources
The development of eviQ Education eLearning resources follows a strict governance process, ensuring all resources are evidence based, demonstrate best practice and are peer reviewed to ensure they provide current knowledge and/or skills for health professionals to provide cancer care. To do this, eviQ Education engages with a range of key stakeholders through convening advisory and review groups for each resource and employing subject matter experts.
"SMEs are the cornerstone of keeping eviQ’s clinical resources current. As medical knowledge continues to evolve, their expertise helps us identify what needs to be updated, ensuring our eLearning content remains aligned with the latest clinical guidelines and practices."
- Lisa McLean, eviQ Education Program Lead
ADAC version 4
To ensure ADAC version 4 was developed in response to the changing clinical landscape, extensive engagement and co-design was utilised to curate each stream:
- Three leaders in their field were engaged as SMEs, one for each ADAC stream (adult, paediatric oncology nurses and cancer pharmacists). SMEs provided expertise on the course content, structure and learning outcomes by utilising the most recent evidence and accessing professional networks
- eviQ education partnered with nearly 200 multidisciplinary representatives across NSW, other states and territories, and New Zealand. Representatives across diverse settings, including regional and rural cancer services, provided understanding of local needs and practices and extensive feedback on the course content and learning outcomes.
This collaborative engagement process led to strengthened evidence-based content ensuring content is relevant, accurate and clear to real-world nurses and allied health professionals. The course structure additionally underwent a redesign to be in line with the highest standards of online learning to include videos, animations, and ways to present information in small, easy to absorb content for best knowledge retention.
"It’s been extremely rewarding to be involved with eviQ Education as an adult nursing subject matter expert…. Working in eviQ is very rewarding because I know it has a direct impact on how nurses provide safe and high-quality care to patients."
- Sarah Chung, Adult Nursing SME, eviQ Education
Opportunities
As the eviQ program continues to grow as a national leader in cancer care education we will continue to work closely with clinical stakeholders across NSW and Australia to identify ongoing education needs.
What is next?
eviQ Education will continue to deliver essential open access web-based learning resources to empower health professionals to stay abreast of essential knowledge, refine their clinical skills and deliver safe evidence-based cancer care.
By continuing to ensure these learning resources, including ADAC version 4, are being embedded in clinical practice, we will continue to see a reduction in clinical variation and improved patient care not only for the people of NSW, but at a national and international scale.