The goal of newborn screening (NBS) is to identify infants with treatable disorders whose symptoms and signs are not present at birth (1). The preferred sample for NBS testing is a dried blood spot (DBS) specimen because it is simple to collect, less traumatic for newborns, has less onerous storage and transport requirements, and can be used for multiple tests from a single DBS card (2, 3). However, because the target analyte concentration in DBS specimens is so low, it is necessary to use assays with very low analytical sensitivity and a high-quality DBS specimen (3, 4).
For the NBS test, a heel prick sample is collected on filter paper. A phlebotomist is not required to collect samples. Nurses typically collect it in inpatient settings (5, 6). Improper collection, specimen contamination, incomplete drying, and transporting at an inappropriate temperature can all degrade the quality of the DBS specimen (7–9). As a result, these nurses must understand 'what constitutes a good quality specimen' as well as 'how to collect, store, and transport a DBS specimen'. So that DBS specimen quality issues do not have an impact on NBS results, because specimen rejection causes delayed reporting, which has an impact on overall NBS program performance (10).
Individuals are mostly trained synchronously on-site for DBS specimen collection through instructional lectures/videos and discussions in a workshop, followed by a demonstration of the procedure. This method has its advantages in that the trainee can directly ask the trainer questions when necessary. However, because only a limited number of trainees can be accommodated in a single session, recruits must attend additional sessions. Newer educational tools, such as virtual learning environments (VLEs), are gaining acceptance for electronic training in this new era of technological advancements. One disadvantage of online training is the absence of face-to-face discussions or question-and-answer sessions. It does, however, have some advantages over traditional face-to-face methods, such as asynchronous teaching, which allows trainees to complete learning objectives at their own pace and time, and it can accommodate a large number of people at the same time.
Nurses and other allied health professionals (AHPs) are typically trained on-site before being evaluated for competence. These AHPs then collect DBS specimens and transport them to the clinical laboratory, where the quality of the specimen is evaluated by a trained technologist when it arrives for analysis. On-site training sessions, knowledge, and competence assessments, on the other hand, take up a significant amount of faculty time and must be repeated for new AHP recruits in different areas or hospitals. A training course on "Moodle," a VLE, was created in response to the need to develop various strategies for training AHPs for DBS specimen collection. The purpose of this study was to determine the acceptability and feasibility of the VLE as a training tool for DBS specimen collection.