Well the new semester starts soon. I will be doing more teaching in SL using Colin the virtual patient and his new heart and lung sounds which are embeded in his chest. This is controlled by the lecturer who can change the sounds – normal, aortic stenosis etc (great work Andy).
I will also be teaching history taking and look forward to welcoming new volunteers who let my students take their real life health history from the comfort of their homes.
This wil be the second round of my action research project. Data will be collected using student and lecturer diaries. Hope to present the results later in the year at a conference in the USA.
We are also working on a web interface which will allow us to add to the case based histories which will speak to our AIML bots and add any missing questions to the answers. This will help create and refine cases.
Well that’s me at the moment, catch you later, Kali/Evelyn
This is round one of an action reserach project I am undertaking. The poster has some of the the conclusions drawn from the students diaries and self -assessment of group work. I have still to collate the data from their presence and immersion questionnaire. What fun SPSS!
We are continuing to work on the patient chat-bots and recruiting more volunteers over the summer.
The first round results of my action research project on teaching healthcare students in virtual worlds will be up within the next month. Some very positve data and a great amount of work done by the students. Also I will update you soon on my work with real people who have volunteered to allow my students to take their medical history via Second Life. Early days with this project but hoping to recruit more people over the summer.
Theresa Price has just returned from a succesful NETNEP conference in Australia (just got back due to the ash).
We are building on and developing a few new projects. An action research project is ongoing and will be evaluated soon. We will share our initial results on the blog. Do please keep an eye out.
Please feel free to comment on any of our work so far. Also if you are interested in any collaboration, please contact us.
Check out the video below for our work so far.
Regards Kali/ Evelyn.McElhinney@gcal.ac.uk on behalf of the team at the School of Health
Accurate selection of exposure factors when x-raying patients is of vital importance to ensure repeat exposures are not required. Due to the use of ionising radiation it is not possible for students to currently practice giving people a range of exposures to see what effect manipulation of exposure factors would have. Experience is currently gained by working alongside clinicians in the clinical environment. Feedback from students currently suggests that selection of exposure factors is an area where they feel they have insufficient practical experience. Giving students a tool where they can practice cause and effect on images dependant on exposure factor selection would enable students to develop necessary practical skills in a safe way.
A virtual x-ray environment is currently under development on Second Life, the aim of which is to enable undergraduate diagnostic imaging students to manipulate exposure factors for a chosen patient and body part. The resultant image will be displayed thereby enabling the student to gain skills in choosing accurate exposure factors. The student will be able to visualise whether their selected exposure factors, variables being kV, mA, time and distance, would have resulted in the image being under-,correctly or over-exposed. It is hoped that over time students will be able to select from a range of options e.g. gender, age, body build, body part.
For more info leave a comment for Jan little aka Bod Mavendorf
A little sampler video sequence to show our work on connecting “Second Life” avatar-patient-bots with specially written AIML [artificial intelligence markup language] and speech synthesis software.
Hopefully we’ll add speech recognition too This project is being used with Nurse Practitioner students. However it could be used for a number of healthcare professionals. Please feel free to add a comment.
There’s more info below, see the post on Sep 16 2009 “Taking a patient history from a virtual patient”
This was a small scale qualitative evaluation of the lecturers’ (researchers’) and students’ experience of using Second Life in order to learn decision-making. Students assumed Avatars (a student nurse image in Second Life) and accessed the Clinical Simulation Laboratory within Second Life following changing into nursing uniform. They then worked through a scenario based activity. Over a six week period each student carried out a communication and visual assessment of six patients in one ward based area (one session for each student). At the end of the session the student was asked to prioritise the care for these patients and explain their decisions. The students then recorded their experiences during a one-to-one semi-structured interview and focus group.
The research team acted as the students’ mentors via their individual Avatars and provided feedback and guidance to the student Avatar.
A pragmatic approach was taken that included elements of:
• Case based learning: six realistic, interactive scenarios were developed at the appropriate level for the students
• Discovery learning: students interacted with others within the clinical simulation environment providing opportunities for incidental learning
• Reflective Learning: students used interview to record activities and reflect on their relevance to nursing theory and practice
This is Colin. He is a virtual patient Bot who can talk. He is used to help qualified nurses to take a diagnostic patient history. He also has embedded heart sounds in his chest. The students can click on his chest in the correct anatomical position to hear the heart sounds which link back to the history they have just taken. Keep your eyes peeled for a video demo of Colin Soon!
Regards Kali Pizzaro aka real Life Evelyn McElhinney Lecturer, Andy Whiteford Technician aka AndyW Blackburn
This project is being used with Nurse Practitioner students. However it could be used for a number of healthcare professionals. Please feel free to add a comment. 
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