Vyaire Medical associates throughout the company are taking on additional responsibilities in response to the global COVID-19 crisis in order to ensure patients are receiving the best treatment possible.

Vyaire Medical's Training and Development team traditionally focused on three areas: sales training, employee development, and leadership development. But the COVID-19 pandemic meant the team had to expand its focus, not just beyond those three areas but beyond the company.

"The strategy we embarked on for this was just-in-time microlearning for healthcare practitioners," said Amy Ables, vice president and chief learning officer at Vyaire Medical. "Our team pivoted fully to focus on customer training needs."

For example, the Training and Development team created 59 customer-facing training experiences accessible through Vyaire Medical's website and the Customer Learning Center. The chapter-based information is designed to allow healthcare practitioners to consume the information quickly — in less than ten minutes — and effectively.

"We didn't want to compromise the content, but we were very intentional with the time commitment so the information could be consumed quickly and clinicians could get back to their patients," Ables said. She added her team is working closely with sales and marketing to see where devices are being deployed so the information can be made available in different languages if needed.

Ables' team also participated in the development of the Ventilation Training Alliance application, providing information on seven Vyaire Medical ventilators. As of early June, that app had been downloaded more than 43,000 times in 182 countries.

Those efforts helped familiarize frontline healthcare practitioners not only with the Vyaire Medical ventilators they were receiving, but with mechanical ventilation in general. "There was a call to action initially for healthcare practitioners to come out of retirement or work in areas they hadn't worked in before," Ables said. "They weren't necessarily going to be familiar with mechanical ventilation."

The team is working with non-medical personnel as well, including setting up training for the more than 700 people helping to manufacture ventilators through Vyaire Medical's partnership with Spirit Aerosystems.

"We also have partnered with our service team to create service training materials and installation manuals to onboard and train new partners for installations," Ables said.

Of course, Ables and her team still keep an eye on the internal training needs at Vyaire Medical. In recent months, her team has launched LTV2™ training for the acute ventilation sales force and clinical specialists; initiated new employee onboarding for the O2 program in Germany, Switzerland, China and Japan; and created 10 online modules to improve leaders' interviewing skill, to name just a few projects.

But even the internal training and development efforts have taken on a new scope as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Ables' team has developed training around safety and the use of personal protective equipment as well as signage for manufacturing sites and field employees.

"The motto for our team is aggressive execution," Ables said. "We have to deliver. You play to win the game.”

For more information about Vyaire’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, visit the company’s COVID-19 Response Center.