Objective
The objective of the interactive learning component is to use clinical cases to convey the fundamental principles of pediatric cancer management.
We aim to provide a broad overview of new patient:
- Presentation
- Differential diagnosis
- Investigation
- Staging
- Therapy
The cases contain information that would be most relevant to medical students, general pediatric residents, nurses in training, radiation oncology residents and pediatric oncology residents (in the first two years of training) radiation therapists and family doctors.
Design
When designing this program the aim was to use clinical narrative to establish authenticity. Most medical teaching and learning resources re-create virtual environments that are very like a hospital clinic with photographs of doctors and patients. Our thought was that perhaps in the evenings, away from the hospital, medical students and residents, for example, may not want to imagine that they are still working in the clinic.
Therefore we started with a Mondrian style framework to present the first 2 interactive cases. Our aim was to create a format that was visually interesting but not distracting.
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was a Dutch abstract painter.
Self portrait:
Piet Mondrian founded and named "Neo-Plasticism" - a Dutch art movement. This is a rigid form of abstraction, whose rules allow only for a canvas subsected into rectangles by horizontal and vertical lines, and colored using a very limited palette.
Here is an example of one of these paintings:
To add interest we have tried to vary the visual appearance of the different interactive cases.
At the end of each interactive case we would be most grateful if you could complete a survey which contains questions about subject content (for example: Did you acquire new information? Is this information relevant?) and graphic design (for example: Would you prefer a more conventional format set in outpatients with pictures of patients?)
We would really appreciate your feedback and your comments. We can then use this information to improve the website and this interactive case based teaching component.
We would like to thank those of you who completed the original feedback form when our first interactive case was launched.
Visit the Piet Mondrian Website
