Publisher Wolters Kluwer’s expanded use of its Lippincott Nursing Advisor clinical online reference tool goes beyond spin-offs like condition-specific apps. This time, the company has increased its reach through the rollout of a more robust version of Lippincott’s Professional Development Programs which began in August. This larger effort included adding more than 100 new e-courses and embedding 3,600 links that tie the continuing education tool to the Nursing Advisor and Nursing Procedures and Skills.

The reason behind the move goes beyond expanding product appeal: the publisher says nurses take around 3,000 of the Lippincott Professional Development Programs a month.

Lippincott’s director of nursing solutions product development Jay Abramovitz told MM&M that the updated professional resource included new topics, such as critical care, new pediatrics resources, and “hot-button topics in nursing,” such as safe opioid use and anticoagulants, “which are one of the leading causes of negative outcomes, adverse outcomes, in the clinical environment.”

He said the publisher also added information about patient- and family-centered care to keep professionals up-to-date on an increasingly popular practice model.

Six clinical educators and a pool of 500 subject-matter experts with clinical practice experience, including editors and content producers, participated in the course expansion and upgrades.

Abramovitz noted that, beyond the new courses, the upgrades add heft to the typical continuing education course because the new features enrich the testing experience: instead of getting a list of wrong responses or a brief rundown of what the answer should have been, the new program connects readers with a fuller explanation and a link to the Nursing Advisor. “A few sentences really isn’t effective in full remediation [for] a nurse,” he said, adding that the seamless flow from question to resource provides education support “without having to think about ‘where else do I have to look’” for information.

Abramovitz, who has over 10 years in the publishing business, said these two features are a point of differentiation for the firm’s professional offering, which organizations, such as hospitals, use to help staff stay on top of their careers and keep pace with required educational credits. “Others don’t have the same breadth of solutions that we have for nursing,” he claimed.