Breezing Up-An Interdisciplinary Health Professions Course for High School Juniors and Seniors and College Freshmen

Clinical Laboratory Science, Spring 2006 by Bruce, A Wayne, Behm, Kylie J, Hammami, Nasser

Recruiting students into the health professions is an ever growing problem as young people are faced with many attractive options for career choices. At the same time, a rapidly growing elderly population will require more health professionals to maintain the health system. To address this recruitment issue an interdisciplinary health professions course delivered to high schools and college campuses in North Dakota via the Internet was developed at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS). The participating high schools embedded the course in the health professions curriculum and students were given the option of receiving college credit. The course features presentations by professionals representing 16 different health professions and were developed using a new software called Macromedia Breeze(TM) that allows for easy recording of PowerPoint(TM) audio presentations and imputing video content into the presentation. Blackboard(TM) was utilized for course management.

ABBREVIATIONS: LRSC = Lake Region State College; OCMEO = Office of Continuing Medical Education and Outreach; SMHS = School of Medicine and Health Sciences; UND = University of North Dakota.

INDEX TERMS: healthcare shortage; health professions recruitment; online course delivery.

Clin Lab Sci 2006; 19(2): 112

As Americans age and expectations for healthcare grow, shortages have developed leading to a decrease in the quality of care as well as an increase in cost.1�2 Rural communities are experiencing an even greater problem as they have limited ability to compete for the health professionals available.3 North Dakota, with a size approximating one third of Texas and less than 650,000 in population, is experiencing this phenomenon and anticipates the problem to worsen. A variety of solutions have been proposed from developing career ladders to importing health workers from foreign countries.4 A significant suggestion has been to work with high schools to familiarize students with health careers. Another solution, proposed by Edward Salsberg in a published report of the Mibank Memorial Fund and the Reforming States Group, was the development of innovative methods for the delivery of educational training such as the Internet and personal computers.4

The University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences Office of Continuing Medical Education and Outreach (OCMEO) has developed a unique distance learning course to familiarize North Dakota high school students and college freshmen with various health career opportunities. The course Medicine 100: Introduction to the Health Professions, one credit, consists of 16 lectures covering a variety of professions delivered via the Internet (Table 1). Faculty for the course were recruited from UND and surrounding colleges. They were either responsible for teaching in the various professions or actively working health professionals. The presentations are approximately one hour in length and include objectives and a short quiz. Printable slides are also available for the students. The presentations are audio PowerPoint(TM) productions with a video inserted showing the healthcare worker in the work setting. In locations where Internet connectivity was a problem, the presentations were delivered via a CD-ROM. Student performance evaluation, course evaluation and student tracking were done for all students on the Internet using BlackBoard Learning System (Release 6)(TM).5 The course description, purpose, and format are described in Table 2.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The presentations were produced using Macromedia Breeze(TM),6 Macromedia FlashMX 2004 Professional(TM),7 PowerPoint, and Serious Magic Visual Communicator Professional(TM).9 Macromedia Breeze allows the presenter to capture a high quality audio PowerPoint presentation and also insert video clips with ease once the video clips have been compressed using Macromedia FlashMX. When produced, it is ready for application to the Internet or onto a CD-ROM. Serious Magic Visual Communicator allows for the production of studio quality presentations that can be inserted into the Breeze program or can stand alone. The production can be done in an office environment without any props.

The final product was developed so students could either access the entire course directly from the Internet or have the presentations on a CD-ROM, with student performance assessment and course evaluation completed on the Internet. If the CD-ROM option was chosen for viewing the presentations, Sum Total Systems Tool Book Instructor 8.5(TM) was used to package them.9

To market the course, the North Dakota Department of Career and Technical Education was asked to participate in the planning and to endorse the course for high schools in North Dakota. A presentation was given to high school career counselors at their annual meeting. In addition, UND partnered with a community college in the center of the state to offer the course as part of their dual credit offerings to high school juniors and seniors. The course developer provided further marketing by visiting several high schools in the state. High school students were given the opportunity to take the course for college or high school credit. Those who chose college credit paid the appropriate college tuition. The Department of Career and Technical Education provided 20 scholarships for college credit and these were awarded on a first come basis. Students taking the course for high school credit were required to pay $20.