Education Horizon-Scanning October 2016 Compiled by John ... · 4 General Healthcare Education Simulated team training really works Source: Nurse Education in Practice Date of Publication:

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Education Horizon-Scanning

Bulletin – October 2016

Compiled by John Gale

JET Library – Mid-Cheshire

NHS Foundation Trust

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Contents

General Healthcare Education ................................................................................................................ 4

Simulated team training really works ................................................................................................. 4

Depression in healthcare students. Who is most at risk? ................................................................... 4

Medical Education .................................................................................................................................. 4

Fledgling doctors enjoy the CoOP ....................................................................................................... 4

Training medical students to act as interpreters ................................................................................ 5

Training the trainers. The OSCE roadshow coming to a medical school near you! ............................ 5

Resuscitation – training doctors to decide ......................................................................................... 6

Treating the body as a system – making connections in medical education ..................................... 6

Are VSAs the way forward for medical exams? .................................................................................. 6

Helping doctors’ managers to cope .................................................................................................... 7

Is there a bone to pick with medical students? .................................................................................. 7

Getting to the bottom of doctors’ empathy ....................................................................................... 8

Using 360˚ feedback to improve communication skills ...................................................................... 8

Making the most of consultants’ time ................................................................................................ 9

Using e-portfolios to improve feedback ............................................................................................. 9

Teaching junior doctors to identify brain diseases in new babies .................................................... 10

Nurse Education .................................................................................................................................... 10

Madness at the Movies. Get your popcorn ready to learn about mental health ............................. 10

Students with special needs. How do they cope? ............................................................................ 10

How ready are nursing students to care for children with cancer? ................................................. 11

Low-cost ways to learn how to look after very new babies ............................................................. 11

How problem-based learning helps nursing students ...................................................................... 12

Health Education England announces nursing associate pilot sites ................................................. 12

Making the move to nurse practitioner ............................................................................................ 12

Using team-teaching to teach biosciences ....................................................................................... 13

Using social media for nursing journal clubs .................................................................................... 13

Teaching nurses about HIV ............................................................................................................... 14

Can a smartphone app clear the air(way)? ....................................................................................... 14

What do student nurses think about drug addicts? ......................................................................... 14

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Is there ever a ‘too early’ for simulation? ......................................................................................... 15

How useful are computers in undergraduate education? ................................................................ 15

Physiotherapy Education ...................................................................................................................... 15

Is kinematic training the future for physiotherapy education? ........................................................ 15

Mobile learning for physiotherapy ................................................................................................... 16

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General Healthcare Education

Simulated team training really works Source: Nurse Education in Practice

Date of Publication: October 2016

In a nutshell: Getting doctors and nurses to work well together is a bit like assembling flat-pack

furniture. Sometimes bits go missing, the instructions don’t always make sense but when it all comes

together the results can be impressive. Training teams rather than individuals can help things work

more smoothly and in this study M.H. Reime, from Bergen University College, led a team of

researchers looking into Simulation-Based Inter-professional Team Training (SBITT). 262 nursing and

medical students took part in the study and they were organized into 44 inter-professional teams.

Two training sessions on the same day improved teams’ performance and making mistakes during

SBITT improved the quality of patient care once students returned to clinical practice as it made

them more vigilant. Watching a video of what they’d done and getting feedback from tutors

strengthened inter-professional teamwork and SBITT gave the students an opportunity to practise

clinical reasoning skills and share professional knowledge. The researchers concluded that

“simulated settings seem to be powerful arenas for learning patient-safety practices and facilitating

transference of this awareness to clinical practice.”

You can read the abstract of this article here.

Depression in healthcare students. Who is most at risk? Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: In this study Eiad AlFaris, from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia, looked into the

levels of depression in students studying at four colleges in Riyadh. Of the students who answered

the online survey when it was sent out 47% had some symptoms of depression. The highest level

was among dental students (51.6%) and lowest among nursing students (44.2%). Women were more

likely to suffer from depression than men and third-year students from all disciplines and fifth-year

medics and dentists were also more likely to have depression symptoms.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Medical Education

Fledgling doctors enjoy the CoOP Source: Medical Education Online


In a nutshell: Communities of Practice (CoOPs) are groups of people sharing similar interests and

objectives who get together to compare notes and share learning among themselves. In this study

Robert G. Bing-You and Kalli Varaklis from Maine Medical Centre looked at the effectiveness of

organising junior doctors’ training programmes into CoOPs based on “discipline similarity,” number

http://www.nurseeducationinpractice.com/article/S1471-5953(16)30120-2/fulltext?rss=yes

http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0794-y

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of learners and geographical location. 11 junior doctors were interviewed as part of the study and

three major themes emerged from the interviews:

Improved group identity

Improved availability of resources

Increased opportunity for professional growth

The researchers concluded that “reorganization within the DME [Department of Medical Education]

into CoOPs was overwhelmingly perceived as a positive change.”


Training medical students to act as interpreters Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: In some countries junior doctors often run clinics left to their own devices, particularly

in parts of the world where the alternative would be no medical attention at all. Interpreters are

often called for at these clinics and a team of researchers led by Jennifer E. L. Diaz, from the Icahn

School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York City, not Egypt) had the bright idea of seeing whether

other medical students would be prepared to act as interpreters. The researchers introduced a six-

hour course providing training on medical Spanish interpreting techniques and language skills to

bilingual students. People who took the interpreting course found their comfort levels,

understanding of their roles and understanding of terminology all improved significantly and

patients and the doctors treating them both rated the participants highly after experiencing their

work during patients’ treatment.


Training the trainers. The OSCE roadshow coming to a medical school near you! Source: Medical Education Online


In a nutshell: In a lot of countries medical students are assessed using objective structured clinical

examinations (OSCEs) where people pretend to be patients and students are assessed on their skills

in treating them. At some point those doing the assessing need to be trained themselves and

Katharine [sic] Reid from Melbourne University in Australia developed an OSCE roadshow to teach

large numbers of assessors at the same time. The roadshow was made up of a short training session

delivered as part of a teaching hospital’s “grand rounds” to current and potential OSCE examiners.

The training was developed to educate clinicians about OSCE processes, clarify the examiners’ role

and the behaviour expected of them, and review marking guides and mark allocations. The

roadshows were well received and 171 clinicians went to six sessions as well as 220 medical

students. The researchers concluded that “the OSCE roadshow demonstrated the potential of brief

http://med-ed-online.net/index.php/meo/article/view/31864

http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0760-8

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familiarisation training in reaching the large numbers of current and potential OSCE examiners in a

time and cost-effective manner to promote standardisation of OSCE processes.”


Resuscitation – training doctors to decide Source: BMC Health Services Research


In a nutshell: Deciding whether or not to give someone cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can be

a difficult decision. CPR can be a traumatic process for patients and doesn’t succeed nearly as often

as TV dramas would have one believe. Nicholas Waldron, from the University of Notre Dame in

Freemantle, Australia, led a team of researchers who talked to eight consultants and 10 junior

doctors and developed an updated Goals of Patient-Care Form and an educational video to teach

advanced CPR decision-making and communication. The researchers used feedback from the

students to improve the video and to refine the Goals of Patient-Care approach to discussing and

recording medical treatment and advance-care plans.


Treating the body as a system – making connections in medical education Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Doctors often treat – and teach medical students about – diseases as though they are

single entities, unaffected by whatever other health problems a person might have. In reality people

usually have more than one illness the symptoms of, and treatments for, which can have

repercussions on their other complaints. One way of approaching this is to use a Clinical Reasoning

Map (CRM) which depicts diseases and conditions as nodes linked to each other by lines or arrows

with different lines or arrows telling people different things about the relationships between

diseases, symptoms and drugs. Saroj Jayasinghe, from the University of Colombo, in Sri Lanka,

studied the effectiveness of CRMs in 289 fifth and fourth-year medical students. 85.5% of them

thought that CRMs improved their understanding of particular cases and 83.9% were keen to learn

the techniques of drawing them. Postgraduate doctors also found CRMs useful in helping them

understand the interconnected nature of real-life cases. However, there was no clear advantage to

CRMs over a list of diagnoses in helping students remember the most important information.


Are VSAs the way forward for medical exams? Source: BMC Medical Education


http://med-ed-online.net/index.php/meo/article/view/32389

http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-016-1803-x

http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0787-x

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In a nutshell: In many areas of life how well one performs a particular task has to be balanced

against the time available for doing it. When it comes to marking medical students’ exams multiple-

choice or single-best answer (SBA) questions can be marked by a computer but can also help

students when there are clues in the question e.g. In what seaside town did the Battle of Hastings

take place? Longer answers can explore students’ knowledge more fully but can’t be marked by

computer and end up taking up hours of lecturers’ valuable time when they could be either finding a

cure for cancer or sat at home with a glass of red wine, a plate of spag bol and Midsomer Murders.

Amir H. Sam, from Imperial College London, led a team of researchers developing a format called

VSA (very short answer) questions. They tested them on 266 medical students and used the filter

function on MS Excel to mark the answers which took less than two minutes. The students got lower

scores on the VSA questions than on the SBA ones, showing that the VSA questions were less

amenable to guesswork.


Helping doctors’ managers to cope Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Doctors who manage other doctors have an unenviable task. Not only do they have

the extra responsibilities of management but they are often seen by their former colleagues as

having crossed over to the dark side, so to speak. In this study Yafit Maza, from Clalit Health Services

in Israel, led a team of researchers looking at the effectiveness of a new training programme for

physician managers designed to prevent them from developing burnout. The course covered:

Models of self-awareness

Outcome thinking

Determining a personal and organizational vision

Creating a personal approach to leadership

256 people went on the course which lasted five full days over a two-week period. The course was

shown to improve people’s job satisfaction and their sense of managerial capability, helped them

cope with managerial dilemmas and improved their feelings of belonging to the organization (i.e.

Clalit Health Services).


Is there a bone to pick with medical students? Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: As most people well gone into middle-age – and quite a few doctors – would testify it

can be quite hard to get to the bottom of aches and pains in one’s joints, muscles and bones.

Medical students can find performing and interpreting musculoskeletal examinations difficult too. R.

http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0793-z

http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0786-y

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Brent Stansfield from the Wayne State School of Medicine in Detroit led a team of researchers who

developed a new objective, structured clinical exam (OSCE) focussing on hypothesis-driven physical

examination (HDPE) to see how much 45 final-year medical students knew about musculoskeletal

examination. The researchers found that the students had “significant deficiencies in examination

skills needed to diagnose common disorders of the shoulder, back and knee,” and that the students

did “not appear to be using the physical exam to inform their diagnostic reasoning.”


Getting to the bottom of doctors’ empathy Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Much like sportsmanship empathy – the ability to place oneself in another’s shoes – is

one of those things much talked about but only found in a few, saintly individuals. Some people –

somewhat naively perhaps – imagine this quality can be measured via a questionnaire rather than by

seeing how people behave when they are with others. One such person is Sarah Mahoney, from

Flinders University in Australia, who led a team of researchers giving out a questionnaire to medical

students at the start and end of their first year and doctors in private practice and public hospitals

where the students had their placements. The study found that the students’ levels of empathy

dropped over the course of their first year. Scores for empathy were virtually identical for doctors in

private practice and working in hospitals and were actually higher than the students’.


Using 360˚ feedback to improve communication skills Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: 360˚ feedback strikes alarm bells in the heart of most people. Be too honest and you

risk upsetting your boss for a considerable period of time and be too complimentary and you run the

risk of coming across as a brown-noser of the first water. 360˚ appraisal is quite popular in medical

education though and this study, led by Cosima Engerer, from the Technical University of Munich,

looked into its use in teaching medical students communication skills. After a mock consultation with

someone pretending to be a patient 34 undergraduates in their first clinical year got feedback from

their tutors, the person pretending to be a patient and their peers. The students accepted the new

method of giving feedback and felt it gave sufficient interaction for discussion and led to a

constructive learning atmosphere.



http://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-016-0777-z


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Making the most of consultants’ time Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Consultants play a vital role in the education of junior doctors but their time is like gold

dust and there are lots of barriers preventing them and junior doctors getting together for teaching

sessions. Shruti Gupta, from Massachusetts General Hospital, led a team of researchers looking into

ways to help junior doctors get more contact with consultants. They developed a four-stage plan

which goes as follows:

1. The supervising resident (junior doctor) assists the intern (more junior doctor) in coming up

with a specific question for the consultant

2. When asking for a meeting with a consultant junior doctors should ask them to discuss the

case in person after they (the junior doctor) have seen them (the patient). The supervising

resident encourages junior doctors to have an “in-person interaction,” with the consultant at

least once during the consultation with the patient

3. During a follow-up meeting junior doctors are encouraged to ask the consultant at least one

question about the case in order to initiate a “teaching interaction.”

4. Junior doctors then share a “teaching point,” they learned from the consultant on ward

rounds

58 junior doctors took part in the study. Following the intervention the percentage of junior doctors

who had an in-person interaction with consultants more than half the time increased from 9% in the

control group to 30% in the group who followed the new plan. Junior doctors who took part in the

new plan also reported receiving teaching in more than half their interactions with consultants more

than the control group (42% vs 19%).


Using e-portfolios to improve feedback Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Medical students on their clinical placements often use electronic portfolios to

document their work and as a basis for assessment. In this study Jane Bleasel, from the University of

Sydney, led a team of researchers which spoke to 130 third-year medical students and six teachers

asking them how they felt e-portfolios contributed to the feedback process. The students received a

variable quality of feedback at each of the three schools that took part in the study with an average

of between 4 and 5.4 “feedback episodes,” per student. Feedback that was constructive, specific and

timely and delivered by a senior academic was important but quantity of feedback was not seen as

important with two episodes of feedback per student being seen as adequate. The main barrier to

using an e-portfolio was the technical problems with e-portfolios which interfered with student

engagement.




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Teaching junior doctors to identify brain diseases in new babies Source: American Journal of Perinatology


In a nutshell: This study looked into the effectiveness of using video clips to screen new-born babies for brain diseases. Junior doctors specialising in paediatrics were shown one-minute video clips demonstrating examination finding in new-born babies with, and without, brain problems. The clips covered: spontaneous activity, levels of alertness, posture and tone, reflexes and autonomic responses. After being shown the clips the doctors were asked to say whether the exam findings were consistent with mild, moderate or severe abnormality. The doctors were then sent away to look at a web-based teaching site containing a collection of videos demonstrating normal and abnormal findings. The study showed that the junior doctors improved in their ability to identify and classify brain problems in new-born babies; in particular they got better at identifying abnormal spontaneous activity, reflexes and autonomic responses.


Nurse Education

Madness at the Movies. Get your popcorn ready to learn about mental health Source: Nurse Education in Practice


In a nutshell: From The Shining to A Beautiful Mind cinema has often found fertile source material in

the stories of mentally-ill people. But can watching a film give nursing students an insight into the

problems faced by people suffering from psychological distress? Edward McCann and Sylvia Huntley-

Moore from Trinity College in Dublin evaluated the effectiveness of a nursing module called

“Madness in the Movies” by using an online survey and a social-media discussion forum. Everyone

who took part in the study agreed that their understanding of mental-health issues had been

enriched, their attitudes and beliefs enhanced and their confidence to talk about mental-health

concerns significantly increased. The researchers concluded that “the module facilitates the

development of students’ knowledge, values and attitudes in relation to person-centred mental

healthcare.”


Students with special needs. How do they cope? Source: Nurse Education in Practice


In a nutshell: Not all nursing students have the same levels of ability and some can have

developmental disorders or special educational needs. In this study Yuko Ikematsu from Nagoya

https://www.thieme-connect.de/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0036-1593846


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University in Japan led a team of researchers asking nursing tutors about the behaviour of nursing

students they had identified as being ‘difficult to teach.’ The most common unhelpful behaviours

were making excessive excuses in everyday situations and lapsing into silence during stressful ones.

Nursing students with special needs were also more likely to blame other people and ‘disappear’

under normal circumstances than those without special needs and were also more prone to blame

others, ‘disappear,’ and stay at home during stressful times.


How ready are nursing students to care for children with cancer? Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Looking after children with cancer can be a difficult job and in this study Elizabeth

Jestico and Teresa Finlay from Oxford Brookes University interviewed six qualified nurses in a

specialist children’s cancer inpatient ward and a general children’s ward where children with cancer

were looked after to ask them how they thought their nursing course had prepared them for looking

after children with cancer. Three themes emerged from the interviews which were:

Learning in theory and practice

Care of the child and family

Resilience

The participants thought that the quantity and quality of the practical experience they had got on

their course was significant and stressed the importance of integrating theory and practice.

Understanding family-centred care was thought to be an important part of their preparation but the

nurses found preconceptions, communication with families and the emotional impact of their work

stressful. However the researchers did find that “improved pre-registration preparation may have

developed participants’ resilience.”


Low-cost ways to learn how to look after very new babies Source: Seminars in Perinatology


In a nutshell: Simulation is often used to teach people techniques it would be too risky for them to

try out the first time on a real-life patient. However, the kit for simulations – life-like manikins that

respond to whatever students do to them – can be very expensive so in this article Christie J. Bruno

(from Yale School of Medicine) and Kristen M. Glass (from Penn State Milton S. Hershey School of

Medicine) looked at cheaper ways people studying new-born babies could learn techniques. These

include using oranges to practise sub-cutaneous injections; using two-litre water bottles filled with

water to practise chest compressions and the Helping Babies Breathe project which uses a simple,


http://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/article/S0260-6917(16)30217-9/fulltext?rss=yes

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cheap manikin to teach new-born resuscitation in low-income countries. Bruno and Glass’s article

reviews other low-cost alternatives for simulation and you can find an abstract of it here.

How problem-based learning helps nursing students Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Nursing lecturers have almost as wide a menu of teaching approaches to adopt as the

average Chinese restaurant. One of the ones on offer is problem-based learning where students are

given a scenario to tackle and expected to do some of the learning and research needed to do so

themselves. Figen Yardimci, from the Ege University Faculty of Nursing in Turkey led a team of

researchers who compared the effects of teaching methods on students’ motivation in a study of

330 nursing students. The study found that problem-based learning was more effective at increasing

students’ inner motivation and was better at helping them acquire learning skills than a more

traditional approach.


Health Education England announces nursing associate pilot sites Source: NHS Employers


In a nutshell: Nursing associates are a new role, designed to bridge the gap between health and care

support workers who have a care certificate and graduate nurses. Health Education England (HEE)

have now announced 11 sites which will pilot the role and the first 1,000 nursing associates will start

work in December.

You can find out more about the pilot sites – and nurse associates – here.

Making the move to nurse practitioner Source: Nurse Education in Practice


In a nutshell: Nurse practitioners are a more advanced type of nurse who are allowed to carry out

more complex tasks than other nurses. Eva Jangland, from Uppsala University in Sweden, led a team

of researchers looking into how nurses felt moving from their ordinary roles to become nurse

practitioners. The researchers interviewed eight newly-qualified nurse practitioners. Their main foci

in the early stages of their job were:

Direct clinical praxis (acts which shape and change the world)

Consultation

Co-operation

Case management

http://www.seminperinat.com/article/S0146-0005(16)30070-2/fulltext?rss=yes


https://hee.nhs.uk/news-events/news/%E2%80%8Bhealth-education-england-announces-training-places-over-2000-nursing-associates

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Coaching

The nurse practitioners felt that the change was a challenging process but were motivated by

positive responses from their patients. They felt prepared for, and determined to solve, the

challenging situations they experienced working with other healthcare staff.


Using team-teaching to teach biosciences Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: When it comes to the basics of anatomy and physiology some people worry that

nurses both don’t know enough about them and struggle to apply their knowledge to clinical

practice. In this study Judy Craft, from the Queensland University of Technology, looked into the

effectiveness of a team-teaching (where students are taught by more than one person) workshop at

helping nurses integrate bioscience theory with clinical nursing practice. Nine students went to the

workshop and they all completed an evaluation of it – four of them later took part in a focus group

about it. Six themes emerged from the study:

Lectures are an inadequate teaching strategy for bioscience

Teaching strategies which incorporate active learning engage students

The team-teaching workshop provides an effective learning environment

The workshop content should be expanded

Pharmacology should relate to bioscience and bioscience should relate to nursing

Team-teaching was effective in integrating pharmacology with bioscience and then

translating this into nursing practice

The students had felt there was a disjointedness between pharmacology and bioscience, and

between bioscience and nursing care within their undergraduate studies but they thought the

workshop bridged the gaps, used active learning strategies and provided an effective learning

environment.


Using social media for nursing journal clubs Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Much thought has been given to the best way of getting nurses (and doctors for that

matter) to read, understand and apply journal articles. One way of doing so is through a journal club

although it can be hard to get everyone who is interested, or ought to go, in the same place at the

same time. One way of getting around this is by using social media. Caleb Ferguson, from the

University of Technology in Sydney, led a team of researchers looking into using social media for



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journal clubs. They concluded that “social media-facilitated journal clubs offer an efficient way to

continue developing critical appraisal skills in nursing students. The integration of a social media-

facilitated journal clubs increased student attention, engagement with presented activities and

overall student satisfaction within this evidence based practice subject.”


Teaching nurses about HIV Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Thanks to medical advances human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) no longer kills as

many people as it used to. As HIV has become relatively less serious as an illness colleges have

devoted less time to teaching nursing students about it but, because more people survive it, there

are actually more people living with it than ever before so there is a mismatch between what

nursing students are taught about this still-serious illness and what they need to know. Judy A. Frain

- from Barnes-Jewish College in St Louis, Missouri – got people with HIV and HIV health-care

professionals to talk to groups of undergraduate nursing students. She found this both increased

their knowledge of HIV and led to a reduction in students’ prejudice against people with the illness.


Can a smartphone app clear the air(way)? Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Small children sometimes swallow things they are not supposed to or have food which

goes down the wrong way. It’s important, therefore, for nurses to know how to deal with airway

obstructions and in this study Shin-Jeong Kim, from Hallym University in South Korea, developed and

tested a smartphone application to help them learn. 73 nursing students took part in the study. Half

of them used the app and the other half had a lecture. The group who had used the app had better

skills and were more confident about their performance than the control group.


What do student nurses think about drug addicts? Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: This study – by Martyn R. Harling from Nottingham University – compared what

nursing students thought about drug addicts compared to what student midwives, social-work

students and clinical-psychology trainees. Mr Harling developed his own questionnaire to measure




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the students’ attitudes. 308 of them took part in the study which found that student nurses had less

tolerant attitudes than other health professionals.


Is there ever a ‘too early’ for simulation? Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: Most nursing students take part in a simulation at some point during their training.

However nurses at the start of their course might have no experience of acute-care skills so it’s a

moot point whether they would be able to benefit from simulations themselves. Jaclyn Lubbers -

from Calvin College, Michigan – looked into this issue testing a five-week paediatric community-

based simulation course on 61 undergraduae nursing students. The study found that the students

were satisfied and felt more confident following their simulation experience and were highly

satisfied with its realism.


How useful are computers in undergraduate education? Source: Nurse Education Today


In a nutshell: In one way or another computers have been involved in undergraduate education for a

while now and in this study Lucy Webb, from Manchester Metropolitan University, led a team of

researchers looking into the usefulness and effect of computers in nurse education. They found 50

studies which showed that educational ICT (information communication and technology) was no

worse than traditional teaching and offered benefits to teaching and learning efficiency. The study

also concluded that “ICT improves the learning environment for staff and students, but human and

environmental barriers need to be addressed.”


Physiotherapy Education

Is kinematic training the future for physiotherapy education? Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: One of a physiotherapist’s jobs is to wiggle patients’ limbs about. Limb-wiggling (or

joint mobilization as the purists call it) has traditionally been taught by lecturers doing a spot of

wiggling first, students attempting to copy them and then the lecturers hovering over them to




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correct any mistakes. This set up can have a number of problems. Lecturers can only do a certain

amount of hovering and their – and the students’ – interpretation of the right way to wiggle can be

somewhat subjective. One of the ways around this is by using movement detectors to monitor the

way limbs are being manipulated and provide students with instant feedback on how well they are

doing (kinematic real-time feedback (KRTF)). Manuel González-Sánchez, from the Universidad de

Málaga, led a team of researchers looking into the effectiveness of this technique. Students were

divided into two groups; one group being taught traditionally the other one using KRTF. The group

using KRTF proved significantly better at joint mobilisation after their training than the group who

had been taught traditionally.


Mobile learning for physiotherapy Source: BMC Medical Education


In a nutshell: Software for mobile devices – usually tablets and smartphones – has been used in a

number of situations in medical education but few mobile applications have been developed in

physiotherapy. Carolina Fernández-Lao, from the University of Granada, led a team of researchers

developing and testing a mobile app aimed at teaching physiotherapy students about the palpation

(using touch) and use of ultrasound in treating shoulder injuries. 49 students took part in the trial.

They were divided into two groups. One group used the app while the other used more traditional

learning methods. Once they had finished their learning the students were tested using an objective

structured clinical examination (OSCE) and multiple-choice questionnaire. Both groups acquired the

same amount of theoretical knowledge but the group who had used the app were better at

ultrasound assessment, positioning the patient, positioning the ultrasound probe, handling the

ultrasound probe, palpating people’s shoulders and on the OSCE test. And the researchers found

that the students enjoyed using the app.




Education Horizon-Scanning October 2016 Compiled by John ... · 4 General Healthcare Education Simulated team training really works Source: Nurse Education in Practice Date of Publication:

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