In-Person vs. Online Medical Certification – What’s the Difference?

If you’re in the medical field, chances are your employer will be requiring you to obtain certain medical certifications, whether it’s your ACLS, BLS, PALS or CPR. And you will be faced with the obstacle of finding how, when and where to take the certification course.

There are various options available to you for obtaining your required certification, and deciding which one is right for you can be challenging.

Here are a few key differences to help you make a more informed decision.

In-Person Classes

One option for getting your medical certification is to attend in-person classes.

These are scheduled classes that are led by an instructor.

Up until relatively recently, this was pretty much the only option available to students seeking their advanced life support or first aid certification.

It also used to be the only type of certification that most employers would accept.

Thankfully, this is no longer the case.

Traditional classroom training works for some people, but it’s not without its flaws. For instance, taking a class in-person means having to adhere to whatever the class and instructor’s schedule happens to be.

This may mean having to take time out of work or spend an entire Saturday in a classroom.

This inflexibility can be frustrating, especially for students who have other commitments, such as a family to care for.

There’s also the possibility of not passing the exam and having to retake it again.

This causes further delays and inconvenience to the student.

In-person classes also tend to be more costly. That’s because there is overhead involved in traditional training.

The facility and physical course materials must be paid for and the instructor must also be compensated.

As such, those expenses are typically built into the price of the course and passed on to the students. If you’re paying out of pocket, this can be quite a hit financially.

Online Classes

The alternative to in-person classes is online medical certification.

With this option, provided the company you choose is reputable, students get the same quality training as they would in a traditional classroom setting but without the rigid schedule to comply with.

Rather than having to attend during a set day and time, online coursework can be self-paced, which means it can be done whenever and wherever the student wishes.

Another great feature of online medical certification and one which sets it apart from traditional in-person classes is the ability to retake the exam as many times as necessary.

If, for whatever reason, you aren’t successful at passing on your first try, you don’t have to worry about rescheduling and further complicating your already busy life.

You can simply retake the exam online at your convenience, saving time and aggravation in the process.

Lastly, because online medical certification is done virtually, there is no costly overhead involved.

There are no physical course materials to produce, no facility to pay for and no in-person instructor to compensate.

Because of this, the cost of online certification is significantly lower than traditional training. So, not only will you save time and enjoy greater flexibility, but you won’t have to pay as much money to achieve the same certification you would receive in a classroom setting.

Conclusion

As you can see, the differences between online and traditional medical certification training are pretty substantial.

Understanding these key differences should make it much easier to choose the best option.

To learn more about Promed Certification and what we have to offer, check out our About Us page or click here to get started with one of our courses right away.