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My name is Gary Theilman and I teach Clinical Pharmacy Practice at the
University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. My school was recently
awarded a grant from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy to
develop a method of providing distance education to pharmacist via Internet
Relay Chat. We are in the testing stages of the program and are looking for
pharmacists with experience using IRC to take part in the CE programs.
The CE programs are in a problem-based learning (PBL) format. Four to six
pharmacists meet on an IRC channel with a School of Pharmacy faculty
"facilitator". The participants will be presented with a written patient
case via WWW. They will then spend the next two hours on IRC discussing the
case and developing a list of "learning issues". Learning issues are
questions that the participants have about the case. These questions may
cover abbreviations, definitions, pharmacology of medications being used,
therapeutic controversies, etc.
After the two hour IRC session, the participants have a list of learning
issues that they must research. They can use whatever resources they have
available. They can work alone or in groups. The one person they cannot
ask is the faculty facilitator.
The participants have a week to research the learning issues. At the end
of that week they take a written examination covering the issues brought up
by the case. This examination is made available as a forms-based web page.
The examination is open-book, but the participants only have one hour to
complete the exam. Upon scoring 70% or better on the exam, the participant
is awarded five ACPE "live" continuing education credits.
We are holding our first CE program the last week in July and then about
every other week. These first few CE programs are bound to be a little
rough as we try to work out the limitations of the process. Until we get
the process smoothed out, we are trying to recruit only pharmacists who have
had experience using IRC.
If you are interested in being a participant in one or more of these CE
programs or know anyone who is, please let us know by sending an e-mail to
pbl.at.olemiss.edu. There will be no charge for the C.E. If you would like
to see a copy of our grant proposal, it is available in Adobe Acrobat format
at http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/pbl/grant.html
We will also be using this method of delivery for a Non-Traditional Doctor
of Pharmacy program and a program to certify community pharmacists in
hypertension management. We plan to present a poster on the project at this
month's AACP meeting in Reno and a full report of our experiences at the
1997 AACP meeting.
Gary D. Theilman, Pharm.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept of Clinical Pharmacy Practice
School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi
http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/pbl
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Gary, this sounds like a very innovative project. I look forward to learning
more about it during the Reno meeting. I would offer to participate,
however, your message implied that you wanted practitioners rather than
educators. I will speak to you in Reno and see how we can best help each
other. Best wishes for success. Bob Bryant (Rxist.at.AOL.com)
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hi
i would be intersted, but i can forsee time as being a problem, since i am
in australia.
if you can accomodate this... i would be happy to give it a go.
bye
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David Bourne (david@boomer.org)