Health Science Curriculum Research Articles

GERIATRIC KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATIONAL NEEDS AMONG RURAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS

Geriatrics has only recently been incorporated into the health science curriculum and, consequently, students continue to graduate with little or no formal training in this area. A survey of 84 rural health care professionals was conducted to determine their geriatric knowledge, their educational needs, and their preferred venue for continuing education. A variety of health care professions was represented in the sample, with the greatest representation from physicians (44%), pharmacists (15%), and nurses (14%). Approximately 39% of the sample reported above average knowledge in geriatrics and 64% indicated that they were interested in learning more about geriatrics. The three most common geriatric areas respondents were interested in included Alzheimer's disease/dementia, medication use/polypharmacy, and adverse medication events. The most preferred training materials included videotapes and CD-ROM courses, and preferred venues of educational activities were in the community or region. An interdisciplinary approach to geriatric care is the preferred method of care. In order to provide better care to the aging population, continuing medical educational opportunities in geriatrics for practicing health care professionals in rural areas need to increase and the curriculum of all health care professional students should include a sufficient geriatric component.

Implications for tertiary education: managerial competencies required of beginning practitioners in the health service sector

Five hundred and three experienced practitioners involved in management from four professional fields (medical radiation science, occupational therapy, speech pathology and physiotherapy) representing a range of health care settings participated in a survey. The survey examined the importance attached to managerial competencies for the beginning practitioner. The most important grouping related to management of future planning. Underlying competencies included decision making regarding time management and communication with other staff. The second most important grouping of managerial competencies related to organisational practices. These competencies included strategic and organisation-wide management processes associated with change, vision, organisational awareness and decision making. The third grouping of managerial competencies related to knowledge regarding legislation and in particular compliance with occupational health and safety regulations. Other competencies were seen as less important for the beginning practitioner. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to health science curriculum development in higher education.

HIV & AIDS in older adults.

Many Americans mistakenly believe that older adults are not at risk for HIV/AIDS. Older people do not perceive themselves to be at risk for HIV infection, either. In reality, approximately 10% of AIDS cases are among people older than 50. Many health care providers lack an awareness of the risk of HIV/AIDS in the elderly population, and as a result, many older people with these conditions are misdiagnosed with other ailments. Major manifestations of HIV/AIDS in elderly adults include Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, herpes zoster, tuberculosis, cytomegalovirus, oral thrush, Mycobacterium avium complex, and HIV dementia. Elderly HIV-positive women have special health concerns, such as cervical cancer. Nurses and nurse practitioners can heighten their colleagues' awareness of the existence of HIV/AIDS in the elderly population and educate their older patients on HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, information about sexuality and sexual practices of older adults should be incorporated into all health science curricula. Additional research is needed to determine the extent of the problem and how health care providers can best serve their older patients' needs.

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Knowledge is the Cure – The British Brain & Spine Foundation Sub‐arachnoid Haemorrhage Information by The British Brain & Spine Foundation. 1995. Clinical Nursing Practice in the Community edited by Maria Kenrick and Karen A. Luker. Science and the Quiet Art: Medical Research and Patient Care by David Weatherall. Quality Assurance in Nursing Practice, 2nd edition, by Nan Kemp and Eileen Richardson. Advancing King's Systems Framework and Theory of Nursing by Maureen A. Frey and Christina I. Sreloff. Problem‐based Learning in a Health Sciences Curriculum by C. Alavi. Nursing Care of Adults edited by James P. Smith. Have a Good Day Series by Jim Wood and Philip Seed with Series Editor Dr John Harris.

The influence of progress tests and block tests on study behaviour

In a problem-based learning system the acquisition of knowledge is initiated and structured by the analysis of problem tasks. Students are expected to state learning objectives for themselves, depending on their interpretation of the problem description. It is claimed that this process of self responsible, intrinsically motivated learning results in stable, firmly anchored knowledge and establishes the students' steady growth in the professional domain. This could be contrasted with the short term oriented, test directed learning activities in traditional curricula, where students' mastery of a (sub)domain of knowledge is, to a large degree, course bounded. In the construction of assessment procedures within a problem-based curriculum special consideration has to be given to the congruence of instruments with the claims as mentioned regarding student behaviour. Progress testing is used as a means for leaving the maximum freedom of learning to students whilst still validly cover the content of the professional domain. Besides this category of knowledge testing other tests play a more or less dominant role, such as testing of professional skills, and, to some degree, knowledge testing in connection with specific courses (so called block tests). In this study the role of progress testing in students' behaviour and students' perceptions are explored within the context of the Health Sciences curriculum in Maastricht. The findings support the claim that progress testing favors learning processes that are characterized as meaning oriented in contrast to reproduction oriented learning. Success in block tests, on the other hand, is better explained by aspects of effort and organization in studying, aspects that generally have been found to be interpretable in terms of achievement orientation. Still, in the perception of students, block tests are seen as more rewarding, and progress tests are not taken to be effective means to trigger self-responsible, free and interest based learning, at least not within an assessment system where both progress tests and block tests are summatively used.

The Allied Health care Professions: New fields for philosophical exploration

This presentation is designed to stimulate philosophers' interest in the Allied Health Professions, as areas of inquiry appropriate to philosophical reflection and particularly rewarding to those with a major focus on value and its experience. With their careful attention to the ways in which value is present in human experience, their second-order principles for designating priority relations among conflicting values, their ability to transfer the results of sustained inquiry into issues of responsibility and decision making from one context to another, philosophers should find the study of the Allied Health Professions rewarding and fulfilling. But with the longstanding commitment to education and the new commitment to applied ethics and values represented by the emergence of institutes and centers devoted to value inquiry in the many professions, philosophers will find these fields increasingly receptive to measured overtures to integrate the humanistic concerns of philosophy into the Allied Health Science curriculum. Attention to the nature and theory of the activities of the Allied Health Professions may also serve to limit the hegemony of medicine in bioethics courses and texts, and thus better enable teachers of bioethics to assist pre-professional students in understanding their chosen professions as embodying the values about which axiology and ethics theorize.

Integrated Academic Information Management Systems (IAIMS). Part III. Implementation of integrated information services. Medical informatics education.

Medical informatics is still in its early stages of evolution and definition. If informatics is to obtain the status of a specialized field of study within the health science curriculum, its ambiguity must be eliminated. This article discusses the term "medical informatics" and the impact of the new field of study on curriculum, education, and training of health care professionals, and health care information systems research and development.

Six Women: A Demonstration of the Uses of Poetry in a Health Science Curriculum

Six Women: A Demonstration of the Uses of Poetry in a Health Science Curriculum

Six Women: A Demonstration of the Uses of Poetry in a Health Science Curriculum

As an English professor I had been proselytizing for several years for more humanities courses in the six-year combined BA-MD program at the medical school of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Then one semester I was offered the opportunity to demonstrate the value of literature to the faculty and students of the medical school at its University Hour, an assembly at which, in most cases, well-known guests presented papers on scientific subjects. The lectures were such a valued component of the academic life at the medical school that the University Hour programs were well-advertised, videotaped during performance, and then rerun on a schedule. But I anticipated that the audience of health science professionals would be indifferent or even hostile to my subject. In previous meetings I had perceived that the majority of the medical school faculty considered literature only as relaxing entertainment or, at best, subject matter for required undergraduate composition courses. They dismissed the disciplined study of its content as a waste of precious time for their medical students. Indicative of their attitude was the comment invariably voiced in any debate about including more humanities hours in the BA-MD program: It matters little whether the doctor administering emergency care to a stroke victim has read The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Perhaps so. But as the whole patient is more than the sum of the parts of his or her body, even during a crisis, so the doctor qua doctor must be more than a collection of technical skills. And the careful reading of serious literature can provide a necessary complement to a doctor's training in the laboratory and clinic. The content of literature is neither useless esoterica nor trivial diversion. Rather it concerns everything human and it expresses fundamental questions about human life in a unique manner which demands a subjective response instead of an objective evaluation. A writer writes about profoundly personal matters and addresses an audience as private individuals rather than as professionals. Therefore, the content of a literary work should reach down into the whole

Navajo Health Authority Ethnobotany Project

ABSTRACTThe Navajo Health Authority was given a mandate by the Navajo Tribal Council to gather basic cultural information and integrate it into a health science curricula for the Navajo Nation. Special emphasis was placed on collecting and assembling ethno-botanical information. Most of the information has been collected. Our job now is to put this information into an easily usable format and to disseminate it without violating sacred beliefs. To do this, we are developing an ethnobotany resource card file, a native plant slide collection, school curriculum materials, and an annotated field guide to Reservation plants.