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CeLT: Compassion in e-Learning and Teaching

Lisa Graves

MD, FCFP

Award: Phoenix Project Fellowship (2012)


Co-Sponsor: University of Toronto

Themes:
  • Digital health
  • Medical education and curricula

The CeLT project investigated the experiences of learners and teachers and developed approaches to caring that can be fostered and taught in and around the use of e-health technologies. Clinicians learn through experience how to navigate the patient clinical encounter with a computer screen present. Observation of clinicians suggests that some are highly successful in using the computer as a tool to enhance the interview. Other observations suggest that the act of typing and managing software overwhelms clinicians and that basic skills— such as eye contact— are lost. Emergency Medical Records (EMRs) allow time to be saved, but how can set templates be used in a way that ensures that each note reflects the patient’s unique experience? Patients identify the “chart” as an extension of themselves, their own story in their doctor’s words. Students need not only to develop an understanding of the mechanics of this technology but also an appreciation of the meaning patients will attribute to these changes. The easy readability of an EMR allows safer communication intra- and interprofessionally, but also allows patients to understand more easily information that was previously shrouded in poor penmanship.

 

 

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