FIPSE Grant

An Interdisciplinary Distance Educational Model for Specialty Education to Meet Training Needs of Healthcare Professionals

 ABSTRACT

 More than 16 million nuclear medicine imaging and therapeutic procedures are performed annually in the US.  As the population ages, demand for such procedures will increase. However, there are critical shortages of programs and educators to train the requisite numbers of nuclear medicine health care professionals needed to meet this demand. This project proposes a new training paradigm that will expand and adapt the successful Nuclear Education Online (NEO) model to address the problem of diminishing educational resources for highly specialized training.

NEO is a web-based curriculum that integrates problem-based learning (PBL) into internet courses using synchronous and asynchronous computer-based instruction augmented by experiential training at local clinical sites. This project’s primary goals are to adapt NEO to related medical disciplines that also have a shortage of educational programs (initially, nuclear cardiology and positron emission tomography), and expand the use of NEO courses in pharmacy curriculums. A secondary goal will be to export this model to disciplines outside of health care that face similar challenges. To achieve these goals, NEO project staff will: 1) redesign specialized courses for other health care disciplines; 2) market these courses to other specialized fields of study requiring nuclear education; 3) determine the sustainability of the new program; and 4) disseminate knowledge of the model to other institutions.

This project is unique in that it targets institutions that have not fully exploited distance education (DE); combines DE, PBL, and experiential training at clinical sites; increases access to highly specialized training programs; minimizes institutional overlap and maximizes the use of technology, making it an extremely cost-effective method for delivering education; is replicable by other institutions both within and outside health care disciplines; and builds on the success of an existing program. The NEO program has been financially and educationally successful for nuclear pharmacists. This project will expand the model to other disciplines with similar needs.