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| Dr. Lynn Johnston, Dr. Robert Strang and Dr. Todd Hatchette conduct the on-line session. |
In light of recent reported cases of H1N1 Influenza A (swine flu) in Nova Scotia, the province’s medical doctors have been scrambling to find out as much about the disease as possible. Dalhousie Medical School this week quickly pulled together an interactive on-line session between top provincial experts on swine flu and doctors all across the province.
More than 100 physicians participated in the session, which was presented by Dalhousie faculty members and infectious disease specialists Drs. Robert Strang, the chief medical officer of health for the Province of Nova Scotia, Lynn Johnston, and Todd Hatchette. The session gave an overview on the situation, and covered appropriate testing on patients (provided a video on how to administer the testing on patients), and infection control.
“This was one of the best efforts I have seen to educate family physicians on a late-breaking topic. I really felt prepared afterwards,” says one of the participants, Dr. Stewart Cameron, who also teaches in the department of family medicine at Dalhousie. “I used the material they presented to make a patient newsletter for our office and also employed it in a radio interview I did the next day.”
This was the first in a series of interactive online sessions hosted by the Medical School’s Continuing Medical Education (CME), which are aimed at providing information for family physicians and specialists. The event was organized by Dr. Mike Allen, director of special projects for CME; Tim Fedak, manager of distributed learning, Division of Medical Education; and Phil O’Hara, manager of Dalhousie’s Integrated Learning On-line as part of a grant from the Division of Medical Education Research Fund.
An originally-planned session was supposed to be a talk on general pandemic preparedness. However, response was lukewarm and registration was sparse. “There was no real interest until developments in the swine flu broke out in the news,” explains Dr. Allen.
Tim Fedak went into high gear to pull together the revised event. Within 24 hours before the event was scheduled to go on line, he contacted 1,400 physicians and specialists around the province to let them know. The response was overwhelming, and within hours, the session was fully subscribed.
“The infrastructure we used was Blackboard Learning Systems that gave the doctors a chance to interact with the presenters,” says Dr. Fedak. “As opposed to videoconferencing where there is a limit to how many people can connect at one time, Blackboard Learning Systems allowed any registered user to connect with the session as long as they had Internet."
Participants can ask questions to the presenter, view the presentation (powerpoint slides, video, visuals), and offer any input. At one point, in the presentation, more than 100 physicians and specialist were connected.
Both Dr. Allen and Dr. Fedak think that this week’s session is the way of the future for many facets of medical education, research, communications, and especially media relations. “We wouldn’t have been able to do this five years ago,” reflects Dr. Allen, “Provincial health would have been relying on just faxed information and media report and couldn’t interact directly with the physicians.”
Dr. Cameron says “the technology worked well, almost flawlessly” and that participating physicians “were able to hear the speakers, see the slides, submit written questions, and speak to the larger group. This type of conference worked very well for me and I look forward to more. Kudos to those who set it up.”
Update on swine flu: clinical information is available for viewing on the online CME site at http://cme.medicine.dal.ca/online/.
Charles Hsuen works in the Communications Office of Dalhousie Medical School.
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