Giddyup! Horses teaching future doctors
by Jillian Ketterer
I wish I remembered how I stumbled upon this clip, but like so many things, it has evaporated into the ether/webulous/what-have-you.
In any event, this fun clip from NBC shows students at Stanford Medical School learning about communication and interpersonal skills from horses. Unfortunately the clip is old (2007) but it is still an interesting concept. Looks like Stanford is still offering the class, and students are still enjoying it as evidenced by this blog.
The clip is posted courtesy of Horsensei, which offers a range of programs for equine-assisted learning (for your job, your medical school, your birthday, etc.)
Perfecting patient care
by Kathleen Rose
Since my last post referred to people who make healthcare better, a post on "Perfecting Patient Care" seemed appropriate. I recently made a short field trip across the great state of PA to Pittsburgh, where I learned you cannot hail a cab easily, but you can find the dedicated staff at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) and Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) doing their best to address patient safety and quality improvement, often in one patient care setting at a time.
In her dual role as president of JHS and co-founder of PRHI, our highly energetic colleague Karen Wolk Feinstein and a fine cast of PRHI staff eagerly introduced us to "Perfecting Patient Care (PPC)," which is based on the "lean" concept, using Toyota-based methods. PPC is an interdisciplinary fellowship program targeted at graduate students that runs for eight weeks during the summer. Twenty to 25 students from several local universities learn a different tool or philosophy each week. Paired with a local mentor, they meet weekly at a different healthcare institution and set to work on a problem, identified by the institution. By employing learned observation methods, students are able to identify issues and design an action/improvement plan. It's an overall win-win situation, the fellows learn a valuable team-based problem-solving methodology, and the institution is provided with valuable information and insight into their issue without having to sacrifice staff time.
Can't participate in the fellowship program? There's always PPC University, a 4-day program to train champions and healthcare professionals in practice. Open PPC runs five times a year in Pittsburgh; participants arrive with a goal in mind, e.g., reducing patient falls, eliminating infections, etc., and leave with the design and implementation tools needed to identify the issues, address the problems and attain their goals. Customized PPC focuses the 4-day program on the needs of an individual institution or care setting and is delivered on-site.
"PRHI offers healthcare leaders the necessary tools, expertise, education, models and networks to perfect patient care and safety in their organizations. Using the Toyota Production System as a model, PRHI developed a quality improvement method for clinical settings known as Perfecting Patient Caresm."
There's also something brewing called Tomorrow's Healthcare, but if I tell you about it, I'd have to kill you. Before taking my leave, I was eager to sign up for University, as I'm sure there is something I can work on fixing around here!
To learn more about PPC and other projects and PRHI programs, check out their website or stop in and say hey to Karen, Laura, Linda, Steve, Keith, Barb, Gerry, Colleen, Brian, et al...
Home safety taught in virtual world
by Kathleen Rose
Check it out! That's me again, in Second Life exploring a site designed to train healthcare professionals in conducting home safety assessments. I recently toured this Geriatrics Virtual World with Drs. Jorge Ruiz and Allen Andrade of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The "homes" pictured here are full of hazards for seniors (e.g., bug infestations; stove burner left on; tripping hazards; etc.). When a trainee tours the home, they are able to address the hazards (i.e., turn off the burner; move obstructions; etc.), and their actions can be recorded and fed back for training or assessment purposes. The home safety assessment is one of several research interests of the GVW group--others include interdisciplinary team training; communication skills; patient self-management; and disaster management. To that end, some of their other SL experiments include "text to speech" where avatars play out a scenario of physical activity counseling for a diabetic patient and provide meditation advice. The video below shows an overview of some of their research around avatar animation--have a look!
These projects appear to be a collaborative effort, so please visit Geriatrics Virtual World for further information. Here you'll find additional videos highlighting their work and a teleport link to the Geriatrics Virtual World in Second Life.
Scouting Themes
Research
- Content analysis of patient complaints
- Changing physicians' competence and performance: Finding the balance between the individual and the organization
- Individual Differences and the Development of Perceived Control
Bookmarks
- Pre-Grade Your Paper!
- Doctor Leads Quest for Safer Ways to Care for Patients - NYT Interview with Dr. Peter J. Pronovost
- Popular Science puts its archives online for free - awesome!
- amednews: National Practitioner Data Bank expanded beyond physicians to other healthcare professionals
- Bloggasm » New study shows some correlation between free ebooks and higher print sales