Srivalli Vilapakkam Nagarajan

Preparedness for eHealth: Health Sciences Students’ Knowledge, Skills, and Confidence

There is increasing recognition of the role eHealth will play in the effective and efficient delivery of healthcare. This research challenges the assumption that students enter university as digital natives, able to confidently and competently adapt their use of information and communication technology (ICT) to new contexts. This study explored health sciences students’ preparedness for working, and leading change, in eHealth-enabled environments. Using a cross-sectional study design, 420 undergraduate and postgraduate students participated in an online survey investigating their understanding of and attitude towards eHealth, frequency of online activities and software usage, confidence learning and using ICTs, and perceived learning needs. Although students reported that they regularly engaged with a wide range of online activities and software and were confident learning new ICT skills especially where they have sufficient time or support, their understanding of eHealth was uncertain or limited. Poor understanding of and difficulty translating skills learned in personal contexts to the professional context may impair graduates ability to confidently engage in the eHealth-enabled workplace. These results suggest educators need to scaffold the learning experience to ensure students build on their ICT knowledge to transfer this to their future workplaces.

Allied Health Academics’ Understandings of Internationalization at Home: A Case Study

Internationalization at Home (IaH) is an educational approach using any internationally relevant teaching and learning activities, excluding student and staff mobility. There is a lack of consensus on what IaH means for teaching and learning in Allied Health (AH). This chapter reports on a study of the understandings of AH academics on the topic of IaH at one Australian university. Thematic analysis of two 90-minute focus groups with AH academics who are involved in curriculum development and internationalization activities was undertaken. Key themes include (1) lack of clarity in AH academics’ understanding of IaH, (2) missed opportunities in harnessing available resources for IaH, (3) absence of explicit internationalization learning outcomes for students, and (4) challenges encountered in implementing IaH strategies in the faculty.

The effect of speech-language pathology students on clinician time use and activity

Abstract Purpose: This prospective study investigated the impact of supervising students on public health speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) time and patient activity levels in order to broaden evidence in the profession. Method: Thirty-four SLPs supervising students collected data profiling their time use and activity during the first, middle and penultimate placement week. They also collected data for a week when not supervising students. Pre- and post-placement surveys were used to supplement quantitative data with additional information such as clinician and student experience levels. Result: Overall clinical time (face-to-face and indirect) and the number of patients seen neither increased nor decreased during student placements. However, clinicians’ use of time altered across placement periods. For example, SLP time delivering clinical services decreased but time observing students providing clinical services increased as the placement progressed. Some differences in time spent in non-clinical activities (e.g. student teaching and SLP administration) were found. Comparing data from placements with varying supervision models or student competence level showed few significant differences in time use, activity or productivity. Conclusion: There was no significant difference in overall clinical time used, nor patient activity or productivity whether clinicians were supervising students or not. Further research is required within SLP services.

Interdisciplinary eHealth Practice in Cancer Care: A Review of the Literature

This review aimed to identify research that described how eHealth facilitates interdisciplinary cancer care and to understand the ways in which eHealth innovations are being used in this setting. An integrative review of eHealth interventions used for interdisciplinary care for people with cancer was conducted by systematically searching research databases in March 2015, and repeated in September 2016. Searches resulted in 8531 citations, of which 140 were retrieved and scanned in full, with twenty-six studies included in the review. Analysis of data extracted from the included articles revealed five broad themes: (i) data collection and accessibility; (ii) virtual multidisciplinary teams; (iii) communication between individuals involved in the delivery of health services; (iv) communication pathways between patients and cancer care teams; and (v) health professional-led change. Use of eHealth interventions in cancer care was widespread, particularly to support interdisciplinary care. However, research has focused on development and implementation of interventions, rather than on long-term impact. Further research is warranted to explore design, evaluation, and long-term sustainability of eHealth systems and interventions in interdisciplinary cancer care. Technology evolves quickly and researchers need to provide health professionals with timely guidance on how best to respond to new technologies in the health sector.

WLGauge: a web link gauge to measure the quality of external www links

External Broken links have a negative impact on any web page user. However, little or no information is provided in advance to advise the user of the quality of the available links before they hit them. Our contributions in this paper are: (1) To present our arguments to suggest that the external link quality is not binary (broken or available) but instead it is a continuous value from low reliability to high reliability (2) To emphasise the need for the web designers to provide some information in advance to the user suggesting the quality of the link. This approach is very similar to having the image size next to a potential loading image giving the user a broad idea about the resources needed to download that image. (3) To present a new tool called WLGauge that can measure some quality attributes of the external links in a web page. WLGauge is an open framelet that can be easily plugged on to any web site development toolbox. WLGauge has been designed with an intention to help the web designer and web maintenance teams to understand as well as improve the quality of their web pages.