Type:
Educational Exhibit
Keywords:
Computer applications, Computer Applications-General
Authors:
P. S. Goh, G. Sundar, C. Tan, M. E. Nga, T. P. Thamboo, S. Amrith; Singapore/SG
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2010/C-1078
Background
Multidisciplinary clinical-radiology-pathology rounds are a common feature in teaching hospitals. These rounds commonly require extensive preparation by clinical, pathology and radiology staff placing additional workload demands [1]. However, several important benefits often result from these rounds including improved communication between the clinicians, pathologists and radiologists, helping optimal use of imaging and pathological specimen processing, answering pertinent issues related to management of the individual patient, overall quality improvement, as well as a role in resident teaching and continuing medical education [2].
Despite the educational benefits of these rounds, regular participation is often difficult with the competing time demands in busy clinical settings. Furthermore, the educational benefits of these rounds are underutilized due to time constraints on discussion, as well as the teaching biases of the individuals presenting and chairing these rounds. This is a waste of the effort and resources applied to preparing material for these rounds.
An attempt to widen access to this material beyond journal case reports and case series has been to create online repositories of this material [3]. Online access significantly increases accessibility of this teaching material globally, as well as allowing residents and fellows’ access at a time of choice. These online collections however still underutilize the value of the clinical, radiology and pathology material as they have the risk of potentially over or underemphasizing the various aspects depending upon the specialty of the leader of the teaching activity.
The purpose of this educational exhibit is to present our work expanding the use of material presented in clinical-radiology-pathology rounds in our multidisciplinary occuloplastic / neuroophthalmology service through online access to separate learning pathways for clinical, radiology and pathology users via an online repository [4].
The key features of this initiative is the use of a similar set of material prepared for our monthly multidisciplinary meetings, but with specific questions prepared in an online quiz format specifically for ophthalmology, radiology and pathology residents. Our website allows free text entry of answers by the residents; routing of these answers via email to the relevant specialty postgraduate training supervisor or nominee; and the provision of an immediate model answer, as well as the ability to download the original case presentation, as soon as the answer is submitted online by the resident.
We will discuss the strategy used to develop this online repository, and the methods we have used to incorporate this into resident teaching in our respective specialties.