After my last post, and some twitter discussion, Natalie and I decided that it was worth giving Diigo a go. It would allow us somewhere to form a medical education community, where we could have discussion, and talk to each other outside blogs. So here it is.
I'll be honest and say that as a social bookmarking tool I am finding it is taking me a little bit longer to find my way around. But it would be good if you check in and give us some feedback. We are living and learning!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Social bookmarking isn't quite social enough for me
I've had limited success in finding delicious doctors. Well, I might have found some and I don't know. I have certainly come across a few people who are very good at tagging sites relevant to me. But it is a little bit frustrating that I can not get in contact with these people, who are interested in the same things as me, to find out who they are and what they do. They might even be part of the elusive medical education community!
There is no way to directly contact another user in delicious if they do not have a website or email address listed. So I have to resort to other methods to make contact. I can join them to my network, send them a link and add a hello message to the note I tag, but I can't just send them a message.
Maybe there are good reasons for this. Maybe it prevents spam. But maybe it is just because delicious don't think it is very relevant. On their help page they state that your network might consist of "even new people you run across while exploring Delicious" so it doesn't seem to be considered a primary purpose of the site. Anyway, I have contacted them to find out and will let you know. I'll also tell you if anyone has responded to my strange hello notes!
There is no way to directly contact another user in delicious if they do not have a website or email address listed. So I have to resort to other methods to make contact. I can join them to my network, send them a link and add a hello message to the note I tag, but I can't just send them a message.
Maybe there are good reasons for this. Maybe it prevents spam. But maybe it is just because delicious don't think it is very relevant. On their help page they state that your network might consist of "even new people you run across while exploring Delicious" so it doesn't seem to be considered a primary purpose of the site. Anyway, I have contacted them to find out and will let you know. I'll also tell you if anyone has responded to my strange hello notes!
Monday, December 8, 2008
The tag cloud of clinical uncertainty :-)
The tag cloud of clinical uncertainty is a graphical representation of the areas of medical research where we still don't have the answers that would help us day to day as practitioners. It is part of the new TripAnswers website, which takes a clinical question answering approach but allows comments from other users. At the moment the site does not seem to be fully functional, but I think it is a great idea.
And for some reason the Tag Cloud of Clinical Uncertainty makes me think of Bill Bailey. I hope that doesn't seem too irreverent ;-)
And for some reason the Tag Cloud of Clinical Uncertainty makes me think of Bill Bailey. I hope that doesn't seem too irreverent ;-)
Patient narratives in medical education.... where are they?
Since my post about students learning from patient narratives in online forums I have been thinking a lot about how much emphasis we place on patient narratives in medical education.
When talking to individual patients we ask students to consider and explore the patient's experience of their illness along with the history of when symptoms developed and how they have responded to treatment. The exercise I blogged about asks students to compare the narratives of one family with that of others in the course and beyond.
But how often are the findings of qualitative research, which is in a sense about bringing together patient narratives, contributing to medical education? For example, there are several qualitative research studies (here and here for example) on heart failure finding that patients want to know more about prognosis from their physicians. But are we teaching students this? Does the Oxford Textbook of Clinical Medicine discuss the experience of being diagnosed with diabetes or heart failure? Well, I can't find it.
Is it time that we stopped seeing patient narratives as an add-on and started moving it to centre-stage in medical education?
When talking to individual patients we ask students to consider and explore the patient's experience of their illness along with the history of when symptoms developed and how they have responded to treatment. The exercise I blogged about asks students to compare the narratives of one family with that of others in the course and beyond.
But how often are the findings of qualitative research, which is in a sense about bringing together patient narratives, contributing to medical education? For example, there are several qualitative research studies (here and here for example) on heart failure finding that patients want to know more about prognosis from their physicians. But are we teaching students this? Does the Oxford Textbook of Clinical Medicine discuss the experience of being diagnosed with diabetes or heart failure? Well, I can't find it.
Is it time that we stopped seeing patient narratives as an add-on and started moving it to centre-stage in medical education?
Del.ic.ious doctors!
I've been using del.ic.ious now for a few weeks, but I have bookmarked very little that is relevant to my other life as a GP. By searching for tags such as appendicitis, bts (for british thoracic society), and rosuvastatin I am establishing that there are few tagging clinicians out there.
It may be hard to convince medical students that social bookmarking will be relevant to their lives unless there are a few examples of early adopter clinicians using it well.
Are there clinicians out there using social bookmarking? I'd be interested to find you. And if there aren't, why not?
It may be hard to convince medical students that social bookmarking will be relevant to their lives unless there are a few examples of early adopter clinicians using it well.
Are there clinicians out there using social bookmarking? I'd be interested to find you. And if there aren't, why not?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Students learning from the patient's online voice
I've been thinking about how students can learn from accessing online communities which are publicly available.
I lead a project where students visit families who are hopefully in reasonably good health. The students are early in the course and we want their learning to be around individuals and families negotiating the choices (or lack of choice) they make with regards to their health and interaction with health services.
The assessment includes a 1500 word essay where they focus on a topic that particularly interested them when they were getting to know the families. The topics can be diverse as how social housing is managed in Cardiff, antenatal screening, or the impact of growing up in a multilingual environment. They are encouraged to compare the experience of the family to accounts in the literature, quantitative and qualitative, and to other families who are participating in the project who have had similar experiences. Students can ask their colleagues about the families they are visiting through a discussion board. As there are only 150 families in the project quite often students will come across issues which no other families have been through. I have suggested to students that they might look at publicly accessible community forums and see if the topics are being discussed there.
Since until this year the project only involved visiting families with new babies or young children, and young mothers can be quite active participants in forums such as mumsnet, babycentre and bounty, there has been lots of material for them to access if they wanted to. For example, last week a student said she wanted to explore cholestatis in pregnancy. I've searched and can't find any qualitative literature on the topic, but threads such as this on the bounty forum can give students many insights into how women perceive the investigation and management of the condition and the impact it has on their lives.
Students learn from the narratives of the patients they meet face-to-face in practice. This is central to medical education. It seems that there could be many valuable opportunities for students to learn from online patients as well.
What do you think? What problems could there be with this approach? What are the possibilities?
I lead a project where students visit families who are hopefully in reasonably good health. The students are early in the course and we want their learning to be around individuals and families negotiating the choices (or lack of choice) they make with regards to their health and interaction with health services.
The assessment includes a 1500 word essay where they focus on a topic that particularly interested them when they were getting to know the families. The topics can be diverse as how social housing is managed in Cardiff, antenatal screening, or the impact of growing up in a multilingual environment. They are encouraged to compare the experience of the family to accounts in the literature, quantitative and qualitative, and to other families who are participating in the project who have had similar experiences. Students can ask their colleagues about the families they are visiting through a discussion board. As there are only 150 families in the project quite often students will come across issues which no other families have been through. I have suggested to students that they might look at publicly accessible community forums and see if the topics are being discussed there.
Since until this year the project only involved visiting families with new babies or young children, and young mothers can be quite active participants in forums such as mumsnet, babycentre and bounty, there has been lots of material for them to access if they wanted to. For example, last week a student said she wanted to explore cholestatis in pregnancy. I've searched and can't find any qualitative literature on the topic, but threads such as this on the bounty forum can give students many insights into how women perceive the investigation and management of the condition and the impact it has on their lives.
Students learn from the narratives of the patients they meet face-to-face in practice. This is central to medical education. It seems that there could be many valuable opportunities for students to learn from online patients as well.
What do you think? What problems could there be with this approach? What are the possibilities?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Gout.... what we don't know.
So, I'm exploring RSS feeds and today added BMJ's Clinical Evidence to my Google Reader. I've just got an update on gout. Unfortunately it seems that we really don't know very much about the treatment of gout. So how should I now treat gout? How does this summary help me?
What are the effects of treatments for acute gout?
| Unknown effectiveness |  |
|---|
What are the effects of treatments to prevent gout in people with prior acute episodes?
| Unknown effectiveness | |
|---|
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