"What Angry Birds Can Tell Us About Educating the Next Generation of Physicians"

In September 2011, Catherine Reinis Lucey, MD, will be joining the UCSF campus as our new Vice Dean of Education in the School of Medicine. Dr. Dave Irby is her predecessor in this position. Dr. Lucey brings with her expertise from the work she has done as the interim dean and vice dean for education at the Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine and associate vice president for health sciences education for the OSU Office of Health Sciences.

Click on image to view video

I recently happened upon a presentation that Dr. Lucey gave as part of AcademiX, an education series sponsored by Apple highlighting mobile technologies in higher education.

She bases her ideas of using mobile technologies in medical education on the example of the popularity of the mobile app Angry Birds. She discusses how to engage medical students through interactive learning on a mobile device.

Below is my summary of her key presentation points:

* In the age of "technology assisted learning", we learn best when at point of need (ie, when treating a patient)

* Utopia of medical education: Create the expert physician

* Deliberate Practice - concept for developing expertise (by K. Anders Ericsson), basis for "Outliers" (book by Malcolm Gladwell)

* Developing expert performance requires:
(1) increasing complex challenges
(2) immediate feedback and coaching
(3) time to practice, fail, practice, improve

* The science and power of motivation:
Having a cycle of challenge -- Allowing time for correction -- Time for reinforcement -- A time rechallenge

* Example: Computer games
(1) engaged user challenged to master skills in each level
(2) the device becomes the coach by allowing/denying passage/progress to next level based on skills learned

Examples of ideas generated at Ohio State University School of Medicine -

(1) "Angry" Mammograms app
-radiology training for reading mammograms
-provides levels of complexity & nuances
- tiered in difficulty
- develops pattern recognition

(2) "Angry" Heart sounds
- auditory learning
- reinforce through repetition, like listening to pop music over and over to learn the melody and lyrics

Goal - to embed mobile devices into medical curriculum to increase efficiency in learning in the process of creating the expert physician.

* Presentation video at http://tinyurl.com/3qvjznt
* Presentation slides at http://tinyurl.com/3ptfuon
* Dr. Lucey's bio at http://tinyurl.com/3oktlaa

Check out previous postings from my blog that relate to gaming apps for medical education topics - http://mededlit.blogspot.com/search/label/games

The Future of Medicine TED Talk

If you haven't gotten a taste of a TED Talk lately, here's one to inspire us towards the vision of how doctors are and will be treating patients with the exponential growth in technologies now available.

Watch oncologist, Dr. Daniel Kraft, a physician scientist, give his April 2011 TED Talk, on "Medicine's future? There's an app for that"

Facebook and Doctor-Patient Relations

As of January 2011, Facebook has over 600 million active users. This breaks down to an average of at least 1 in 12 people in the world have a Facebook account. With these odds, it's inevitable that the paths of patients and doctors should eventually intersect on Facebook.

A real dilemma has arisen: Patients have found their physicians on Facebook and have requested to be friends with them.

Because of the personal information that can be found on Facebook, it seems intuitive that a doctor should not accept a friend request from a patient. But with no hard and fast guidelines, what is a doctor to do? Facebook reveals too much of what is personal and private that a physician, and a patient, would not particularly want to know about the other.

In the past two years, there have been a few opinion pieces published in medical journals addressing the issue of whether or not doctors should accept patients' friend requests:

• Grover, M. (2010). Defining the patient-physician relationship in the era of facebook. Academic medicine, 85(8), 1262-.


• Jain, S H. (2009). Practicing medicine in the age of Facebook. The New England journal of medicine, 361(7), 649-51.


• Lacson, S M, Bradley, C, & Arkfeld, D G. (2009). Facebook medicine. Journal of rheumatology, 36(1), 211-.

As of November 2010, the Australian Medical Association and their related Australian and New Zealand associations are in the forefront of setting guidelines for physician use of social networking sites such as Facebook.

[View the guidlelines at http://ama.com.au/socialmedia].

This initiative was in response to the fact that some physicians have posted negative comments and even the names of some of their patients on Facebook. This clearly crosses the boundaries of professionalism. These opinion pieces and guidelines should set the stage for active discussion in the medical profession and medical schools of how physicians should or should not interact within the world of social media. Feel free to put in your two cents in the comments section below.

The American Medical Association actually does have a short statement on their website about professionalism and social media. Check it out at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/meeting/professionalism-social-media.shtml

Google's Tech Quick Tip Videos

I don't know if you're like me, but if anyone in your family thinks that you have some level of tech savvy, you end up being the go-to person for tech troubleshooting for all things large and small.

For example, 20% of the time when my dad comes over to visit and is checking his email on my computer, he'll exclaim, "What happened to my bookmarks?!" Then I'll take a deep breath and remind him that his bookmarks are on HIS computer at home, and the ones on mine are specific to my computer alone.

Well, help is on the horizon now that the young techies at Google have created a fun and useful series of videos at TeachParentsTech.org. The website's name pretty much says it all.

These incredibly short and to the point videos all run under one minute. One of my favorite features is at the end of every video there is a childhood photo of the presenter with their parents.

Tips range from very basic (ie, how to copy and paste, or how to increase text size) to skills that everyone, not just parents, can appreciate (ie, how to take a screenshot (see below)). A lot of the tips are geared towards Mac users, but some do cover tips for PCs.




Feel free to navigate the TeachParentsTech.org website for more videos, or simply browse the related videos in the YouTube right menu after viewing one of their videos.

Share this news with your parents and other frequent tech-frantic but loving family member or friends. They'll thank you for it, and you can thank the folks at Google for making our lives easier.

Procedures Consult: an Online Resource to Brush Up on Clinical Skills Knowledge

"See one. Do one. Teach One…Made Better and Safer”. That’s the tagline of Procedures Consult, an online resource that is now available to you thanks to the UCSF Medical Center and the Library’s joint efforts to set up a subscription to this tool. This comprehensive and concise procedural reference tool details how to prepare for, perform and follow up on the most common medical procedures.

View a quick narrated overview tutorial below

Key features include:
· Videos and illustrations for each procedure
· Self-directed procedures training and testing with trackable results
· Pre-, During, and Post-procedure reference
· Procedural checklists and Universal protocols
· Billing codes for procedures

Additional educational benefits:
· Highlights when patient "informed consent" is required
· Reinforces Joint Commission patient safety concepts
· Conforms to ACGME and ABMS (American Board of Internal Medicine) standards

Helpful ways to browse the content from the Procedures Consult homepage are to: (a) look under the Procedures by specialty listed in the left menu bar (b) type a specific procedure into the search box, or (c) select a particular region on the illustration of the human body.

Below is an example of what a procedures listing contains. Go to http://tinyurl.com/pconsult to view a short narrated video tutorial on how to navigate Procedures Consult.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE LARGER VIEW

Options of where to access Procedures Consult:

- Listed under the Popular Resources section on the Library’s homepage
- Download the Clinician’s Toolbar to your browser for a one click link to Procedures Consult

How to access this resource on your mobile device:
- Go to m.proceduresconsult.com *
- Also check out the UCSF mobile page at m.ucsf.edu developed by the Library

Top Reasons to use Procedures Consult:

(1) Clear and concise information about how to perform major medical procedures

(2) Excellent self-review of information you need to know for critical clinical skills training

(3) Ideal teaching tool to offer residents, students, and other medical trainees that allows them to track their learning via self-paced tests

* Setting up mobile access: first go to Procedures Consult - the web resource (http://app.proceduresconsult.com/Learner/Default.aspx) - (NOTE: you must sign into VPN first, if you're accessing this off-campus). In the upper right of their page, click on the "Sign-in" link. Create your account there. That should be what you use to log into on your mobile device when you go to m.proceduresconsult.com.

Use Jing to Create Quick Online Tutorials

For the past two years or so, I've been using Jing to produce quick online tutorials (aka "screencasts") that capture what I am doing on my computer screen. Jing, which is free, is a product of TechSmith, the company that produces Camtasia, which is not free.

Jing is great if you need to make quick online tutorials. Noteworthy features of Jing are:

* Record your voice narrating the tutorial

* Create a JPEG image of any part of your screen that can be labeled, annotated, and highlighted

* Immediately generates a URL to your tutorial that you can share with others or post to a website, even to Twitter and Facebook

* Both PC and Mac compatable

For $14.95/yr, you might consider purchasing JingPro. This allows you to save your tutorials as movie files that can be easily uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or to your own web server.

One big thing to keep in mind about Jing is that you CANNOT edit your recordings. You'd have to buy software such as TechSmith's Camtasia or Adobe Captivate to be able to edit your recordings. These programs I'd suggest you use if you're looking to make lengthier and more interactive tutorials.

But for its amazing ease of use, I'm all about using Jing!

Watch what Jing has to say about itself:

Also check out their blog for more tips

As a huge advocate of efficiency and accessibility to creating online learning materials, I encourage you to go forth and Jing!

Genes to Cognition Online

The Genes to Cognition Online (G2C) website is an amazingly dynamic and interactive way to use multimedia to teach neuroscience. The resource is a project of the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

G2C looks across and analyzes six levels of thinking and thinking disorders and research approaches:

*Genes *Biochemicals *Cells *Brains *Cognition (Behavior) *Environment

Its interface appeals to both the visual and textual learner. The dynamic map of networks connect topics and allows the user to interactively explore the content, which includes videos. The site's creators state:

"We hope visitors will integrate information from the levels to gain a broad understanding of topic areas. Ultimately, this networking process mimics the nature of science: amalgamating information from different domains to form a complete picture of the world."

The upper right portion on the homepage has a link to Teacher Feature that provides teacher's guides, student worksheets, and suggested test questions.

Also in the upper right region of the homepage is a link to a Protein-Protein Interaction Database. You can find brief descriptions of proteins and get links to more detailed information from resources such as OMIM and Entrez Gene.

This is the same group that developed the 3D Brain App that's available for free to download from iTunes Apps Store.

Watch their introductory video on how to use this resource.

EdHeads Virtual Surgery Games

If you're not a real surgeon, but you want to play one (on the web), EdHeads.org has created a site that's just for you.

The EdHeads team creates educational interactive web modules. There are currently nine activities to choose from. The medically related ones are surgical deep brain stimulation, hip replacement, hip resurfacing, and knee surgery.

Once you've entered one of the surgical activities, you'll be taken from the Reception Desk into the hallway of the OR. A virtual surgeon will orient you to your patient and have questions for you to interact with and answer throughout the tutorial. You will be asked to select different surgical instruments and use them during the surgery.

The tutorial is narrated, but you can also select the Subtitles icon to see closed captioning. If you want to skip ahead to different parts of the tutorial, select the Activity Site Map icon.

If you have the stomach to view actual photos of the surgeries being described, click on the Surgery Photos icon.

Included with each activity is a Teacher's Guide to give you ideas of how to make the activities a useful learning tool for your students. There are sample quiz questions and answers, a glossary, and additional helpful resources on the topic.

If you're in the mood for something non-medical, check out the others, such as Designing a Cell Phone or learning how to predict and report the Weather.

Be inspired to have fun!

Personal Learning Environments: the new era of education

Technology has taken learning to an entirely new level in the 21st century. No longer do students learn by just receiving information from instructors in the classroom or lecture environment. Tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and smart mobile devices fold in multiple layers of alternative delivery of knowledge and communication.

Students no longer just write papers or take tests to show what they've learned. They create websites, blogs, and videos to capture and showcase their learning. I, for one, am very excited to see this wave of creativity surge in education. These new tools empower learners to develop a hybrid approach to exploring and defining their own learning styles.

What I've just described is the personal learning environment (PLE).

Watch & listen to this presentation by Graham Attwell, an "educational technologist, researcher and blogger based in Pontypridd in Wales and Bremen in Germany. "

Personal Learning Environments: The future of education?

View more PDF documents from GrahamAttwell.

Read more about PLEs:

- Attwell's compendium paper to the presentation above

- 7 things you should know about PLEs

Watch this great video that clearly paints the picture of our future, if not already present, medical students.

YouTube Education Channels

With YouTube, who needs TV anymore?



It seems like anything and everything can be found on YouTube. Missed the Top 10 list on David Letterman last night? No problem, it'll probably be up on YouTube in a day or two. Heard about the amazing two-legged dog named Faith, but you missed her appearance on Oprah because you were busy working? Run a quick search in YouTube on faith two-legged dog oprah and, voila, your wish is their command.

Of course, if you want to see a video of your neighbor playing a nose flute on his porch, I'm sure you could find that on YouTube too.

To satisfy more than just your fluffy entertainment bug, YouTube thankfully has additional "Channels" that include educational videos amongst the many channel topics:

(1) Click on the Channels link to the left of the search box on YouTube
(2) Select Education in the left menu
(3) The top set of videos are under the category of Channels from YouTube EDU; click on that link to get to a full listing of broadcasts from educational institutions.
(4) You can run a search within the YouTube EDU search box (ie, type in medical school) and in the list of results, you can watch a video of Dr. Calvin Chou of UCSF lecturing on the physical exam and bedside manners.



You can also search the regular YouTube search box with words such as UCTV medicine to find videos from the University of California Television broadcasts. Or search on the words education medicine to browse videos pertinent to medical education.

The next time your boss walks into your office while you're watching YouTube, you can show her that it relates to work and is part of your research.

Watch, learn, and enjoy!

The Doctor's Channel

Ever wish that you could get a quick update on what doctors are telling each other about the latest treaments? Wish you could watch rather than read the latest updates in medicine? Well, wish no further, The Doctor's Channel is here.


The Doctor's Channel describes itself as an "educational YouTube for doctors." It was created by New York physicians, David Best and Michael Banks.

These great videos are short, 1 to 3 minutes. Topics span 35 medical specialties, tips for medical students and educators, as well as newscasts from Reuters Health. Transcripts of the video and citation of the article being referenced are available below each video. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page to see related videos.

Here's a sampling of the site's content:

* Emergency Medicine
Preoperative briefings reduce operating room delays

* Medical Students - Listening to your patients
- Top 10 Tips for Residency Interviews
- Top 10 Tips for Matching Successfully

* Business of Medicine - Concierge physicians

My First Venture into Video

I recently attended the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey, CA. It was an energetic gathering of tech savvy librarians from across America sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm of what they've created for new ways to deliver and find information online.

I attended several sessions covering how to make video podcasts. The idea of making things really come to life with video sounds just plain fun! So I put myself to work and play.

I found a free video editing program online called Jumpcut by Yahoo. It's a great first tool for me to try out because all I had to do was to upload videos and images onto the web. I could easily edit the video and add audio and text. The file is automatically compressed to the right size without me having to know anything about how to do that.

So here are the results of my first Jumpcut videos:


The video of Woods Hole, MA is taken from my camera phone, thus the indie "live action" bumpiness of walking and talking. The video is about twice as large as the original video display, so the film is slightly grainy, but you get a feel of what Jumpcut can do with video from a cell phone.


The Mission mural walk video was made from my digital camera photos.

If you're thinking of making videos to host on the web and want to start practicing, I'd highly recommend Jumpcut as a fast and easy tool to try. Have fun!

Four Big Ideas from the Carnegie Study on Medical Education (video)

This lecture by Dr. David Irby was present on April 3, 2008 for the Stanford School of Medicine Medcast lecture series.

David Irby, PhD, is Vice Dean for Education and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In his lecture, he discusses a national effort by the Carnegie Foundation to assess the professional preparation of physicians and offer recommendations for how best to update this framework to meet our emerging healthcare needs.

Videos on MayoClinic.com

The Mayo Clinic provides consumer health information at http://www.mayoclinic.com/.

In addition to health information, this site features short instructional videos. The videos run an average of 30 seconds to under two minutes.

The information is easy to understand for the layperson. For example, view this video that describes how antidepressants help relieve depression. Each video also has a transcript listed next to the video.

There are collections of videos pertaining to exercise:

• Strength Training Videos
• Fitness Ball Videos

There are also videos on how to prepare healthy recipes, such as this one for honey crusted chicken.

The videos are archived as well in alphabetical order. It would be nice if they were sorted by categories, but it's good to at least have a full listing of their videos. These videos are ideal for referral to patients as well as for personal education.

NEJM Videos in Clinical Medicine

http://content.nejm.org/misc/videos.shtml

Since April 2006, the NEJM website has featured a growing collection of how-to videos.

* Most videos run 6 to 15 minutes

* Topics (i.e.): intubation, catheterization, arterial line placement

* Includes a PDF transcript of each video

* Provides references for more information

NOTE: You must be connected to campus network to access these videos.

If you forget the URL to this page, you can also navigate to it via the NEJM website (http://nejm.org/). Click in the Recent NEJM Video box in the right column.

Read more about this video feature.

JoVE - a video journal

Hang on to your hats...there's a journal that is completely video based and online!

JoVE is a fantastic collection of short videos that go over basic and advanced laboratory techniques. I highly recommend this resource for anyone who is doing bench research or just interested in finding out what goes on in research labs.

Pop some popcorn and sit back and prepare to be educated!

Tip for Whiteboard Teaching

For those of you who like to use the whiteboard to aid in teaching, there is the once in a blue moon occurrence of accidentally writing on the board with a permanent marker instead of the dry erase markers. Yikes!

Not to worry though...if there is a spray bottle with ethanol (alcohol) near the whiteboard, you can use that to erase the permanent marker.

BUT in the unfortunate event that you don't have ethanol nearby, this video shows a quick alternative to removing permanent marker ink from a whiteboard.