How do you know whether clinicians actually learned something, rather than simply completed the training?
On a recent episode of Nordic Global’s Designing for Health podcast, Matt Hays, Ph.D., learning scientist and cognitive science expert, joins host Craig Joseph, MD, to explore what decades of research reveal about how people learn, retain knowledge, and apply it in high-stakes healthcare environments.
The conversation challenges some common assumptions about healthcare training, including the idea that attendance or immediate assessment results are reliable measures of learning. Matt explains why effective learning often requires “desirable difficulties,” why testing can be more powerful than simply presenting information, and how confidence-based learning® can uncover potentially dangerous knowledge gaps that traditional assessments miss. Amplifire’s learning approach is designed around these principles, using brain science to personalize learning and focus each learner on what they need to master.
Matt and Craig also explore the role of AI in healthcare learning and performance support, including an important distinction between helping someone perform a task in the moment and helping them build knowledge they can retain and apply later. For healthcare leaders focused on clinician performance, patient safety, EHR adoption, and workforce development, the episode offers a practical look at how cognitive science can inform more effective training. For a real-world example of these principles in action, see how Stanford Health Care reduced onboarding time by 50% while using personalized learning and confidence data to identify knowledge gaps and support clinicians who needed additional help.