Sabbatini, R.M.E 1,2.; Kitamura, S 2,3.; Santino, E. 2; Batista, A R. 2 and Dragone, P.L. 1,2
1 Center for Biomedical Informatics, State University of Campinas; 2 Center for Studies on Health and Work, The Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health; 3 Occupational Health Programme, Dept. of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
Address for correspondence: Dr Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PO Box 6005, Campinas SP 13081-970, Brazil, renato@sabbatini.com
The wide dispersal of occupational
health and work safety professionals
in large countries and subcontinents, such as in Brazil and South
America makes it very difficult and expensive
to provide continued education to them. This has immediate and long
range consequences as to professional excellence,
access to recent information and career development, particularly in
areas of fast change in the health sciences.
Technology-based distance teaching and learning is increasingly being
used with success for the delivery of continued
education. In this paper we report an initial and pioneering experience
in Brazil, involving a programme in distance
education in Occupational Health, which was established by the Center
for Studies on Health and Work (CEST) of
the Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health, a non-profit
scientific and educational association
which is responsible for the coordination of the National Consortium
for Distance Education in Medicine and Health
(www.edumed.net ), presently comprising about 20 educational and
research institutions in the
private and public sectors across Brazil. CEST/EDUMED is using a mix of
Web-based and videoconferecing/teleconferencing
technologies to provide high quality continued education programmes to
Brazilian professionals. Three main initiatives
were started. The first, course code EMC-004, is a journal club with
more than 200 enrolees, with the following
characteristics: every week, one of the course tutors choses a recently
published and important paper from the
international literature and occupational health and provides through a
website (managed by TelEduc's web-based
distance learning platform: www.edumed.org.br ) the full text paper, abstracts in English and
Portuguese, additional comments
and references, a topic for debate among the students and an on-line
3-question quizz to evaluate the apprentice's
learning and understanding about the paper. In the second course, coded
EMC-011, students who are preparing themselves
for the National Board examination for the title of Occupational
Medicine specialty and other public or private
job competitions. receive specialized coaching and a review of the
subject matter, by answering 20 multiple-choice
questions per week, during 5 weeks, with automatic scoring and
formative evaluation and comments; as well as participation
in a "virtual class" (text-based webchat) on the Saturday. We are
testing a new technology, audio and
video webcasting of lectures and seminars, together with digital
satellite TV via the Embratel 21 Institute's Digital
Multimedia Library Programme (www.bibliotecamultimidia.org.br).
These events are transmitted
at set dates and hours and can be watched
for free all over the world. Lecture and seminar topics so far have
included Work Related Strain Injuries, Noise-Induced
Loss, Ergonomics, Alcoholism and Smoking in Work Environment, Common
Intoxications, and so forth. Finally, CEST
has been experimenting with interactive, dedicated videoconferencing
using ISDN lines at the speed of 384 kbps
and TCP/IP lines at the speed of 768 Kbps, to carry out seminars
connecting together 4 rooms in as many cities
in Brazil. We report here initial results, benefits, advantages and
difficulties, and highlight a forecast of our
future activities, which will encompass international collaboration as
well.
Keywords: occupational health, distance education,
medical education, internet, satellite, multimidia, WWW,
videoconferencing
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