Software & Literature Reviews

These are personal reviews, which have been written for a variety of purposes and over a fairly long period of time.

Consumer Health Informatics: informing Consumers and Improving Health Care book review 15.5.06

From Patient Data to Medical Knowledge book review 6.4.06

Healthcare Informatics book review 3.3.06

The Nurse's Internet Handbook: a guide for nurses in primary care book review 20.1.06

Essentials of Nursing Informatics 4th Edition book review 4.1.06

The NHS IT Project: The biggest computer programme in the world… ever! book review 16.6.05

A Handbook of Ethics for Health Informatics Professionals book review 15.7.03

Using Information and Communication Technology in Healthcare book review 1.10.02

Mapping Health on the Internet - book review 23.7.02

Finding and Using Health and Medical Information on the Internet - book review 23.7.02

Taking Health Telematics into the 21st Century - book review 4.12.00

The Essential Guide to the Internet for Health Professionals Sydney S. Chellen 2000 Book review 2.6.00

Using the Internet in Healthcare - Stuart Tyrrell 1999 Book review 21.1.00

Royal Marsden manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures CD Review 5.1.2000

Nightingale EU Nursing Informatics Project - 3 CDs Review 27.10.99

Understanding Surgery - CD Review 8.10.99

Computers in Nursing: Bridges to the Future - Book review 28.5.99

Advanced Clinical Information System (ACIS) - CD Review 7.4.99

Centre for health informatics: Improving Awareness of Information and Communications Technology in healthcare - CD Review 30.3.99

IT-EDUCTRA Awareness, training and education in informatics and telematics, for healthcare practitioners - CD review 30.3.99

Nurses' Guide to the Internet - book & software review 30.3.99

Advances in Health telematics Education : A NIGHTINGALE Perspective - Book review 17.1.99

The Anatomy Lab - CD review 7.12.98

The Domino Effect - video review 5.10.98

Cardiac Dysrhythmias - software review 25.8.98

EPR Awareness CD - software review 14.6.98

Clinergy GP - software review 4.6.98

Warren, A., Brunner, D., Maier. P. & Barnett, L. 1998 Technology in Teaching and Learning: An Introductory Guide. &
Maier, P., Barnett, L., Warren, A. & Brunner, D. 1998 Using Technology in Teaching and Learning. - Book review - Feb 98

Helpdisk V2.2 - hypertext essay writing guide on disc - 10.10.97

Health Telematics Education - Book - 11.9.97

Clinical Interactive Support System CD-Rom 25.4.97

Read Code Demonstrator CD-Rom 20.4.97

Effective Leadership - CD-ROM Multimedia Training Package 16.4.97

IMPACT - Teaching & Learning Technology Programme (Herriot-Watt University) 24.3.97

Health on the Internet 1996 by Dennis Anthony

Changing Health Beliefs and Behavior

PERSONAL HEALTH RECORD TRAINING PROGRAM

PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Clinical Decision Making

Open letter to nurse-UK mailing list 21.3.96

Child Development


Changing Health Beliefs and Behavior

Available free by ftp from http://www.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk/~mczwww/tltp.htm

This program, which is designed for first courses in behavioral sciences, health psychology or psychology applied to health professions, is aimed at degree and diploma students. It is part of a series of programs being developed by the Teaching & Learning Technology Project (TLTP) "Applying Behavioral Sciences to the Teaching and Training of Health Professionals".

The package covers models of health behavior incorporating beliefs and motivation and how one can use these models to design health promotion interventions.

Once installed the program presents a screen and available buttons, designed to assist navigation around the program. Users are invited to play a short clip, in which a representation of a discussion between a couple about overeating and smoking is shown, each participant uses common behaviors related to health beliefs and education. In the copy I obtained the clip is sound and text, although I presume this will be a short video in future.

There are then exercises to match examples of cognition's to excerpts from the clip, and make suggestions about how this knowledge could be linked to health promoting activities. It took me a few attempts to get used to the required actions on these screens. I am not an expert in the subject area, and I could not comment on the accuracy of the content, however, my wife, a psychologist, was willing to debate some of the "correct" answers. Debate and further reading about the subject areas would be a worthy "hidden outcome".

Installation was quite easy, as long as you are happy "unzipping" files. The sound driver is optional. But a minimum of 20Mb on the hard disk is required.

There is, of course, no documentation with a copy obtained by ftp, but the screens were clear and a help function is available to explain button use. The menu file was unfortunately unavailable with my copy.

Further development will obviously improve this program, but it is a useful contribution to making a wider range of learning tools available to our students, considering health related topics.


PERSONAL HEALTH RECORD TRAINING PROGRAM

REF: IMG A1057

A very useful program which emphasizes the need for accurate record keeping by all staff, giving appropriate rationale.

Produced by the NHS TD for the IMG.

6 units are contained ;

A Overview of record keeping

B Formal investigative & legal issues

C Professional discipline

D Care & quality issues

E Patient-friendly issues

F Case studies

The program is very slow to run on any machine with less than 8 MB of RAM.

The screen are clear & nicely laid out. The inputs required of the user are varied. The help screen and map of progress are also useful features.

Worksheets and case studies are used which enhance the learning & make it relevant to everyday practice. (It would be nice to have the worksheets which have to be printed available as a preview on the screen.

In the professional bodies section the ENB & UKCC for nursing appear to be missing.

The bookmarks system is useful allowing users to return to the same part of the exercise after a break.

Copies are available from:

Department of Health
PO Box 410
Wetherby
West Yorkshire LS23 7LN
Tel: 0193 784 0250
Fax: 0193 784 5381

PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL PROFILE (27.2.96)

This is a useful contribution to an expanding field, however, I did not find it particularly useful for our students.

The installation to hard disc was clunky (I'm running Win 95 on a Pentium 133Mhz with 16Mb of RAM).

The screens were clear and all buttons worked. The left hand edge of the screen did not seem to be aligned properly.

The content was accurate in as far as it went, but there was nothing which could not be gained from paper sources, and the interface did not add anything to the experience. The absolute reliance on Yes/No or True/False questions became boring quite quickly.

I would not be recommending it's purchase at the present price.


Open letter to nurse-UK mailing list 21.3.96

I thought list members might be interested in 2 bits of educational software I have just been evaluating.

I was able to download them free, as part of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme.

The Programs were "Child Development" and "Changing Health Beliefs and Behavior"

Both programs could be useful as adjuncts to nursing & health care courses. The screens were always interesting and material delivered in an accessible way.

Other titles I look forward to previewing include;

Pain

Clinical Decision Making

Neonatal Pain

Visual Perception

Communication Skills

Pregnancy, Contraception and Childbirth

Stress in Health Professionals

Using and Constructing Questionnaires

Quality of Life measures

Details of the Packages & the TLTP Project "Applying Behavioral Sciences to the Teaching and Training of Health Professionals" are available from their WWW Site at the University of Nottingham. URL: http://www.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk/~mczwww/tltp.htm

I think they are an interesting contribution to the use of multimedia in Health Care Education.


Clinical Decision Making (3.5.96)

This program provides an introduction to research on clinical decision making and sets outs stages in the process which may be adopted. It would be suitable for use in a range of degree and other educational programmes for health care professions.

Interesting examples and challenges are used to get the student thinking about the ways in which decisions are made, and illustrate a range of models which might be considered.

These include;

* Probabilities

* Bayes theorem

* Heuristics

* Confidence

* Framing

* Primacy & Recency

A variety of ways of assessing performance and avoiding bias in decision making are considered followed by Decision and Sensitivity analysis. A range of tools for outcome assessment are also considered.

The examples given largely relate to health care scenarios.

The graphical interface is clear and easy to use, however the help function was not available on the copy I downloaded. A short tutorial about how to use the program was available, but obviously with a downloaded copy there was no documentation.

Available free by ftp from http://www.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk/~mczwww/tltp.htm

Installation was quite easy, as long as you are happy "unzipping" files. The sound driver is optional. But a minimum of 20Mb on the hard disk is required.

This program, which is designed for first courses in behavioral sciences, health psychology or psychology applied to health professions, is aimed at degree and diploma students. It is part of a series of programs being developed by the Teaching & Learning Technology Project (TLTP) "Applying Behavioral Sciences to the Teaching and Training of Health Professionals".


Child Development

Available free by ftp from http://www.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk/~mczwww/tltp.htm

This program, which is designed for first courses in behavioral sciences, health psychology or psychology applied to health professions, is aimed at degree and diploma students. It could also be used on NNEB, advanced GNVQ or similar courses. It is part of a series of programs being developed by the Teaching & Learning Technology Project (TLTP) "Applying Behavioral Sciences to the Teaching and Training of Health Professionals".

This package presents basic milestones of child development from birth to 6 years old. Linguistic, social adaptive and motor development are described with clear text and, in most cases, photographs. There is also a slide bar function to show development in each of the areas. The slide bar was a bit awkward and took getting used to, but generally the program is easy to use with friendly children's pictures as the menu system. The quiz to test users learning from this program is a particular highlight.

Installation was quite easy, as long as you are happy "unzipping" files. The sound driver is optional. A minimum of 4Mb on the hard disk is required.

Further development will obviously improve this program, but it is a useful contribution to making a wider range of learning tools available to our students, considering health related topics.


I can be contacted Rod@RodSpace.co.uk

Page Created: 18.5.96

Last Updated: 15.5.06