Abstract:

Development of new techniques must be followed up not only by disemmination, but by offering new solutions for transferring medical knowledge. Normal gait is essential for daily living and the number of pathologies that affect gait is increasing (accidents, aiging). In orthopedics, in particular after surgery, a long and difficult rehabilitation process follows in order to regain normal gait and requires interdisciplinary approaches. Clinical experience showed that each patient has its own particularities, so standard procedures are not all the time effective and need to be adapted (patient focused intervention). Our solution was to provide information and education to medical doctors by the use of a Learning Management Systems delivered through the Internet, within the framework of COR-skills project. COR- skills which stands for “Collaborative learning for enhancing practical skills for patient-focussed interventions in gait rehabilitation after orthopedic surgery” is an EU funded project under ERASMUS+ that started in december 2015 and will finish in december 2017. Our Strategic Partnership will support a project-based collaboration between hospitals and Higher Education Institutes, to develop, test and adapt a continous vocational educational programme, based on an exhaustive needs analysis and focusing on a “real-life” transnational approach. We aim to stimulate resident learning by new approaches, as the development of an innovative e-training method which is able to provide the trainees with a range of case studies and an advanced training curriculum. The training material is accessed via a standard web browser, which provides an integrated multilingual on-line learning environment. The presentation tier is adapted to include additional data provided by specific modern investigation methods, including medical imaging, video files of motion analysis, graphs of forces, muscle and joint reactions, numerical data, contact pressure diagrams, etc. Assesment is done by multiple choice test and case studies that will be solved by the trainees. Interactivity allows trainees to test their knowledge and provides immediate feedback using images and cases that they could encounter in clinical practice. This will function as a virtual medical environment, similar with the work place and help attune curricula to current and emerging labour market needs and equip the specialists with required skills, by developing active cooperation between HEI and partners from outside academia: hospitals, medical centers, research centers. In addition, we hope to stimulate interest in solving clinical problems in the field of orthopaedic surgery and to offer personalised support both for the learners but also for the clients (patiens). Implementation of individualised health care approaches is one of the major innovations of this project, encouraging critical thinking of the trainees, reinforced quality of medical services, increasing the level of health care, decreasing the rehabilitation time and health costs, development of inter-sectorial and international collaborative cultures by sharing of knowledge and ideas from teaching to work-place.

Keywords:

Online education, orthopedic surgery, rehabilitation, patient foccused interventions.