iNvestigate: Online Patient Simulations for Education in the Rational Use of Investigations – Final Report for Phase 2 (2011)
Description
This project follows on from Phase 1 and sought to develop 20 to 25 authentic case studies spanning all post-graduation year one (PGY1) relevant areas of clinical practice and related investigations. The iNvestigate website is: http://investigate.med.unsw.edu.au/
to develop 20 to 25 authentic case studies for iNvestigate
to enhance the software via:
review and optimisation of the ‘virtual universe’ of investigations available for ordering
programming of an improved user interface.
These aims and objectives were achieved by this project.
Outcomes
Twelve cases have been developed and a further 10 are in various stages of development.
All cases studies, once they are fully developed, will undergo progressive external review and improvement as appropriate.
Over 30 additional investigations have been added while at least another 30 investigations now have synonyms or abbreviations included in the name label to improve full text searching.
The interface was upgraded to streamline the user’s interaction with the website.
There is enhanced searching for tests.
The website has been continuously available since it was launched with a demonstration case on 6 June 2010. Rakesh K Kumar from the Department of Pathology at UNSW, and the Medicine Computing Support Unit at UNSW, share the responsibility for hosting the website and ensuring its availability.
There has been a systematic effort to publicise iNvestigate, although the most significant issues in the longer term is the impact of external factors on the capacity of those involved with iNvestigate to promote its dissemination and use by the target audience.
The lack of funding for the Australian Curriculum Framework for Junior Doctors Project will inevitably adversely affect the visibility of iNvestigate.
Other approaches to disseminate this resource are being explored. For example, the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) have provided a link via its Education Portal to the iNvestigate website.
Rakesh K Kumar, from the Department of Pathology, UNSW, in collaboration with Professor Gary Velan of UNSW, has created a cloned site called ‘eDiagnostic’ with access to this website restricted to students enrolled in the Medicine program at UNSW.
Finding
The critical issue for take-up is persuading the PGY1 graduates to make the time to use iNvestigate, and not the quality of the resource itself.
Recommendations
Research avenues for iNvestigate to be deployed for other target audiences with the development of suitable cases. For example, create a clone of iNvestigate with cases for medial students such as eDiagnostic.
Identify further relevant target audiences such as the The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) or the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), and develop new cases.
Key Project Learnings
Challenges associated with reaching iNvestigate’s intended target audience were not technical issues, but issues related to dissemination and take-up. One potential barrier contributing to this issue is that what iNvestigate offers may not be what the target audience wants. To address this, feedback from PGY1 graduates during the developmental phase was essential but difficult to obtain, mostly because these graduates are so busy they have insufficient time to be involved in all of the educational activities available to them. Considerable efforts have been made to recruit graduates to provide specific commentary and feedback although there have been few active participants so it was not possible to gather user questionnaire data. The few who offered commentary were very complementary.
A lesser issue has been recruiting specialist reviewers for the cases and finding they are not as computer-savvy as their PGY1 junior colleagues.
Other issues relate to investigations missing from the RCPA Manual which therefore have no associated data if they are included. This was resolved by taking advantage of the highly flexible administrator interface developed for iNvestigate.
iNvestigate: Online Patient Simulations for Education in the Rational Use of Investigations (Current).
Areas for Future Consideration
Identify further potential users for iNvestigate.
iNvestigate: Online Patient Simulations for Education in the Rational Use of Investigations (Current)
Description
This project is Stage three of the iNvestigate initiative and is rebuilding the platform, including database structure and user interface, to allow multiple audience and interface extensibility, and to also allow the iNvestigate website to ‘go live’ for ongoing general practitioner (GP) instruction. The iNvestigate website.
Grant Recipient
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Aims
to develop a fully functioning software platform to use as a base for an on-line educational program for junior doctors
to allow multiple case sets on the website to be developed in this instance for the specific target audience of general practitioners.
This project is current and these aims are in the process of being achieved.
Outcomes
Stage one was a pilot study which developed the software platform and a test case scenario.
Stage two resulted in the development of 20-25 case scenarios with appropriate instructional value and allowed the website to ‘go live’ for prevocational medical trainees.
