University of Melbourne rural medical students - first in Victoria to use hand held technology
Media Release, Monday 4 September 2006
Medical students from the University of Melbourne’s School of Rural Health in Shepparton are the first in Victoria to be given personal digital assistants (PDAs) to readily access up to date medical information on their training rounds.
“The program provides students with ready access to up to date information about health conditions and treatments. In this way it contributes to their medical knowledge on the job, without them having to return to their computers,” said Coordinator of the Program Professor Bill Adam, of the School of Rural Health
“Importantly, the PDA’s help teaching staff to ensure that their students are getting appropriate experience,” he said.
Professor Adam said that currently there is no guarantee, particularly in rural areas, that medical students are gaining exposure to a breadth of disease and conditions in their training.
“Medical students in rural areas don’t have access to the breadth of patients and specialist knowledge available in big city hospitals. Providing students with PDAs gives them access to a breadth of information – and allows teachers to monitor student experience,” he said.
“We have brought together specialised commercial software for information supports well as developed our own software program for students to log patient information and to provide feedback about the usefulness of the training.”
“This feed back provides crucial information to help our teaching staff to adjust the curriculum and develop better medical training programs.”
Head of the School of Rural Health, Professor Dawn DeWitt said that in time, every doctor who sees a patient out of the office will be able to use this type of hand held technology to gain specialist medical information.
“In this way, the School of Rural Health is leading the way advancing the delivery of better health training in Australia,” she said.
Following a comprehensive trial in 2005, approximately 90 students will undertake the program in 2006.
The University of Melbourne recently was awarded 30 additional rural medical student places by the Commonwealth Government. The first intake will be in 2007.
MEDIA CONTACT
Professor Bill Adam
PDA Program Coordinator
School of Rural Health
Phone: 03 5823 4545
Mobile: 0405 041 128
Professor Dawn DeWitt
Head of School of Rural Health
Phone: 03 5823 4582
Mobile: 0408 312 256
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