Nancy Copenhafer and Daniel Iglesias of AdventHealth, one of the largest faith-based nonprofit health systems in the US, on why not every learning need is a course, and how microlearning for healthcare reaches nurses who can't sit at a computer.
The reach problem behind 100,000+ team members
AdventHealth is one of the largest faith-based nonprofit health systems in the US: 57 hospitals across nine states, more than 100,000 team members. For Daniel Iglesias, an instructional designer in the corporate Center of Expertise for Learning, the central question isn't what to build, it's how anything gets to the people doing the work. The traditional answer was the LMS. The traditional answer leaves most of the clinical floor behind.
"Some of our employees are in that healthcare space. They are actively taking care of patients, going from one room to another and they don't necessarily have the time nor the technological resources available to sit in front of a computer for hours on end to complete this learning."
Daniel IglesiasInstructional DesignerAdventHealth
Not every learning need is a course
Before AdventHealth picked a tool, they fixed the intake. Daniel's team built what they call a dynamic learning life cycle, a way of catching every request, asking whether it's actually a training need, and routing it to the right format. Some things belong in Workday Learning. Some belong in Articulate. Some things should just be an email. And some belong in a 2-minute tap-through that meets a nurse between patients.
"7taps as wonderful of a tool as it is, it is not our solution for all learning need problems. It is something that we very intentionally leverage and utilize in the space where it makes the most sense … the decision on how to solve for a problem comes way before you select the tool to utilize."Daniel IglesiasInstructional DesignerAdventHealth
Microlearning for healthcare: drawing the line
Nancy Copenhafer joined the regional nurse professional development team and got her 7taps license in January. Within weeks, every manager on every campus was asking her for one. Her first job wasn't building courses, it was teaching the difference between a competency that has to be tracked and a reminder that has to be remembered.
"I very frequently have to educate on, okay, I can't do this in this manner because you want a competency and you want tracking … 7taps is not set up for that. It is for that reminder, it's for that quick information."
Nancy CopenhaferNurse Professional Development ManagerAdventHealth
From clinical reminders to patient education
Because Nancy's role sits across departments, the work has spread well beyond fall risk refreshers and a new vascular surgeon's quick reference. A senior vice president asked for a tap-through explaining how any nurse, in any state, can finish their BSN online through AdventHealth University. Then the work crossed the bedside entirely: chronic-disease discharge guides for heart failure patients, in English and Spanish, on the phone they already carry home.
"Patients come in and they're really confused. When do I call my doctor, when do I go to urgent care? When do I come back to the hospital? … We translated them all into 7taps in English and Spanish. So now we're getting to the point of reaching out to our patients so they can take care of themselves better at home."Nancy CopenhaferNurse Professional Development ManagerAdventHealth
How they got buy-in
Daniel is direct about how this scales inside a 100,000-person system: it scales through conversations, pilots, and proof. He recommends starting with a specific problem, customizing real use cases to your own departments, running a small sample, and then telling the story when it works.
"How do we get buy in? … It's as simple as a conversation but it has to be a very intentional conversation … customize it to your organization and your needs within the different areas and set up a pilot, set up a sample of what that might look like and what problem that might solve for."Daniel IglesiasInstructional DesignerAdventHealth
Takeaways for L&D
- Fix intake before you pick a tool. Decide what is a course, what is a reminder, and what is just an email, then route accordingly.
- Use microlearning for healthcare where the floor lives: short tap-throughs on a phone, between patients, no hour-long computer session.
- Educate stakeholders on what a quick-tap tool is not. If it needs competency tracking, it belongs in the LMS, protect that line.
- Don't stop at staff. Patient-facing education in plain language (and more than one language) is a natural extension of the same reach.
If your team doesn't sit at a desk to take the training you've already built, see how 7taps delivers it to them where they actually are.
