Learning by Doing: Bringing Lifelong Learning to the Clinical Practice
Michael Reng
University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
ABSTRACT:
See one, do one, teach one is unfortunately a common learning strategy in medicine. If it is possible to bring relevant information to that very point of the clinical environment in quick and practical way this could significantly support the involved doctor by allowing her or him to reflect on other colleagues experience before doing. The idea to use Internet information-services during the ward-round to support clinical decision making seems to be an illusion as all Internet-users will understand that the selection of all topics containing appendicitis (about 60000 documents) just leads to an overflow of information. Today there is hardly any chance to select clinically relevant from irrelevant information and to link this information to the clinical needs.
The MedicDAT project (funded by a grant from the German federal ministry of science and education) has the aim to link clinical information from hospital or practice information systems to teaching and learning media in medicine. Therefore an XML (extended markup language) structure for the clinical setting is developed in cooperation with scientific publishers and producers of medical information systems. An additional aim of the MedicDAT-project is to display the context-linked medical information at any place on any electronic device. The use of XML-based content together with suitable style sheets allows this platform-independent approach.
Whether such a clinically oriented XML-structure can significantly support continuous medical education by allowing a context-based linking of clinical and teaching contents still has to be shown. Even in the often hectic setting of a hospital or medical practice the reality-oriented approach learning by doing then could change to the patient-oriented approach learning before doing.
BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:
The MedicDAT-project aims to connect clinical information systems to teaching and learning media in medicine. This context-based media connection shall bring medical information right to the clinical user and allow"real-time" lifelong learning in medicine.
Michael Reng, MD
Dept. of internal medicine 1
University hospital Regensburg
FJS-Allee 11
D-93042 Regensburg
Phone: +49 941 944-8901
Fax: +49 941 944-8902
Email: michael.reng@medicdat.de
Website:http://www.medicdat.de