Background: About 650 5th year medical students are taught at our department every year. Within this course for occupational medicine each student visits six small group sessions held by different tutors. In order to enhance the learning experience by a more patient-oriented format for this course, we integrated a case-oriented e-learning tool. The aim of this project was to improve learning and memorizing of occupational medicine topics and increase the students’ motivation for the subject.

Method: The computer cases are based on real patients and were implemented with the CASUS authoring tool. Special emphasis was given to didactic aspects. The authoring tool was jointly developed by the University and the Instruct AG (www.instruct.de) and is easy to use, as no programming abilities are required. A tutor was facilitating the students. At the end of the session 210 of 212 students completed the volunteer evaluation-questionnaire.

Results and Discussion: The mean ± SD of the overall rating of the cases on a scale from 1=excellent to 6=poor was 2,4 ±0,8. More computer-based cases in occupational medicine were requested by 71% of the students while only 6% preferred to have less computer-based training hours. Students who thought gaining medical knowledge is most effective during clinical electives (n=121) were more likely to ask for more cases on the computer being integrated into the curriculum than those who did not think so (2.4 vs. 2.0 lessons, respectively; 95% CI for the difference: 0.06 ñ 0.78).

In conclusion, the case collection seems to support the acquisition of clinical knowledge in occupational medicine and its typical diseases and thus represents a valuable addition to conventional teaching. Further cases are currently generated. After clinical experts’ and students’ evaluations are complete they will be provided to other universities. International cooperation is planned.

Acknowledgement: Supported by the Klaus-Tschira-Foundation, Heidelberg, (www.villa-bosch.de).

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

CBT was successfully integrated in the occupational medicine course with the CASUS learning system. With this approach, we demonstrated enhanced student interest and improvement in the teaching of clinical aspects as well as special problems related to occupational medicine. The strategies for a successful integration of web-based training will be emphasized.

Jörg Reichert
Inst. f. Arbeits- und Umweltmedizin
Ziemssenstr. 1
D-80336 München
Germany
Phone: +49-89-5160-2359
Fax: +49-89-5160-3957
Email: Joerg.Reichert@arbeits.med.uni-muenchen.de
Website: http://www.med.uni-muenchen.de/arbmed/

CO-AUTHORS:

Katja Radon (1)
Inga Hege (1,2)
Martin Fischer (2)
Dennis Nowak (1)

(1) Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Ziemssenstr. 1, D-80336 Muenchen, Germany
(2) Medizinische Klinik, Klinikum of the University Munich, Ziemssenstr. 1, D-80336 Muenchen, Germany
Phone: (1) +49-89-5160-2794
(2) +49-89-5160-2289
Fax: (1) +49-89-5160-3957
(2) +49-89-5160-2366
Email: katja.radon@arbeits.uni-muenchen.de inga.hege@instruct.de
martin.fischer@medinn.med.uni-muenchen.de dennis.nowak@arbeits.med.uni-muenchen.de
Website: (1) http://www.med.uni-muenchen.de/arbmed (2) http://link.medinn.med.uni-muenchen.de/instruct/