AACN Launches New LMS Providing Nurses with Free COVID-19 Training

At a glance

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit association, is the world’s largest specialty nursing organization. Their mission is to provide acute and critical-care nurses with expert knowledge and professional and personal support in their pursuit of the best possible patient care, knowing that patients and their families rely on nurses at the most vulnerable times of their lives. With active membership of over 125,000 critical-care nurses and over 200 US chapters, they are the largest organization of their kind—representing over half a million critical-care nurses.

AACN promotes life-long learning through a variety of professional certification and continuing education (CE) activities, which include their vital and innovative e-Learning & certification preparation courses delivered through the Oracle Learn learning management system (LMS). Hospitals and healthcare providers contract with AACN for customized access to training content via their own unique sub-instance of AACN’s parent LMS. AACN currently supports over 350 of these individual sub-instances, with over 5,500 monthly users.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, AACN stepped up to the plate and led by example—they made the decision to offer a new evidence-based training course free of charge to all nurses to cross train or refresh their skills, regardless of AACN membership status. This course, which focuses on the serious pulmonary implications of the virus, was developed to quickly empower learners to care for ICU patients with COVID-19. To deliver this free training, AACN needed to roll out a new sub-instance of their LMS as quickly as possible.

AACN previously partnered with eSkillz in 2018 to completely redesign their Oracle Learn LMS user interface and user experience. Their original design, done internally in 2009, desperately needed a refresh, and the design that eSkillz created and implemented streamlined the experience for nurses to access valuable resources and training. The redesigned LMS provided aesthetic enhancements that led to increased user engagement, equipping AACN members for success in their personal and professional development journeys. The redesign went live in early 2019—it was and continues to be a huge win for AACN. Extensive focus group testing returned all positive feedback: “The format is very well thought out and designed.” “A much more intuitive user experience, and a cleaner GUI.” “Much easier to navigate and find what you need.” “Visually appealing, very professional look—just love it!”

The new design was strategically developed to work not only for AACN’s parent LMS, but also for all 350+ of AACN’s unique LMS sub-instances, and to support any new sub-instances that may eventually be deployed by AACN, should the need arise.

Because eSkillz and AACN had the foresight to plan for potential future deployments of the design, AACN was already equipped to stand up a free COVID-19 LMS when the critical moment arrived. Not only was the idea possible, but the LMS design framework had already been put in place to quickly make it a reality and meet the immediate need.

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​The eSkillz expert team of designers within our Professional Services division has produced successful designs for over 300 HCM/LMS clients. Our seasoned team designs with your users in mind, creating modern, responsive, and clean user interface design with an engaging experience that excites users and directly impacts the success of your HCM/LMS solution. Our designers work with you to guarantee that your organization’s brand standards are met, and the project vision is cohesive. We offer creative guidance and best practice recommendations throughout the process for both general and system-specific design.