title: A student emergency medicine clerkship that uses new information technologies.
abstract: The effective teaching of clinical emergency medicine to medical students requires efficiency in the management of both student and faculty time. Presented is a course outline that makes use of the following elements to structure and augment clinical time in the emergency department (ED): Videotape to present a 19.7-hour series of faculty-produced lectures covering a "core" emergency medicine curriculum. A microcomputer to facilitate staggered scheduling of clinical time. A microcomputer test generation program that permits a secretary to formulate, administer, and grade a different final exam with each rotation. Computer-assisted recordkeeping for faculty evaluation of a student's clinical performance. Once established, this program can be administered with fewer than five faculty hours per month assisted by a part-time (25% full-time equivalent) clerical coordinator. The total cost for the instructional program is $86.37 per student using the new technologies, and $144.15 per student when presenting the same program using traditional teaching techniques. The use of new technologies in student teaching will therefore result in significant savings.
mesh_terms: D002982:Clinical Clerkship / Q000191:economics; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000191:economics; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008838:Microcomputers