Unit 2-5 Medicine and Nursing

After completing this unit, you will be able to:

• Recognize the breadth of multimedia applications in health care for medical training, emergency preparedness, and virtual surgery.
• Understand how health care professionals in your community should be using multimedia computers to prepare for emergency situations.
• Find out whether your local health care professionals are taking advantage of online resources, videoconferencing, and interactive diagnostic programs.

Reading

Read chapter 7 of the Multimedia Literacy textbook to study the concepts covered by this unit.

Online Activities

This unit surveys applications that promise to provide you with better diagnosis when you get sick, more-efficient treatment, life skills to keep you healthy, and, in an emergency, health care professionals who either know what to do about the situation or who can use a multimedia computer to find out what to do before it’s too late. The following online activities reinforce important concepts and bring the reading to life:

• When life depends on something, people get serious about it. So it is with multimedia and health care. Follow the Multilit Web site links for examples of how the health industry is using multimedia for medical training.
• Imagine a surgeon using a head-mounted display to rehearse the removal of a brain tumor by moving surgical instruments through a 3-D view of the tumor. Imagine a physician using hand gestures to control tiny robots that swim through your blood vessels and fire lasers to vaporize cholesterol plaques that can cause heart attacks. Imagine being able to take a virtual walk through your body to see how a particular medication acts to prevent an asthmatic attack. For examples of how these kinds of applications are coming to be, follow the Multilit Web site links to virtual surgery.
• Follow the Multilit Web site links to online health care resources including WebMD, the National Institutes of Health, the C. Everett Koop Institute, the Harvard Medical Web, HealthWeb, Healthfinder, Yahoo’s Health Care Index, and the Medical Matrix, which is an extensive guide to Internet clinical medicine resources.

Assignments

One of the major assignments in this course is the term paper that you will write on a topic of your choosing related to a multimedia trend or issue in your chosen field. The other large assignment in this course is the multimedia application that you will develop and publish to the Web, again on a topic of your choosing. If medicine or nursing is your field, it is possible that the readings in this unit will help you decide upon one of these topics. After you choose your topics, remember to respond to the assignments that ask you to tell your instructor what topics you have chosen:

• A major part of your grade in this course is determined by a term paper that you write on a topic of your choosing related to a multimedia trend or issue in the field of education or communications. Your paper must be about six pages long and contain at least six bibliographic references if you are taking this course for undergraduate credit, or about twelve pages long with at least twelve references for graduate credit. Before you write the paper, you need to have your topic approved. Please tell what your paper is going to be about. Say why you have chosen this topic, tell how you plan to research it, and indicate how the writing of this paper will help you achieve the goals you had for taking this course. Your instructor will respond by writing a comment on this assignment to let you know if your topic is approved.
• The largest part of your grade in this course is determined by the multimedia application that you will create. Your application must have at least seven screens if you are taking this course for undergraduate credit, or at least fourteen screens for graduate credit. Before you develop the application, you need to have your topic approved. Please tell what your application is going to be about. Say why you have chosen this topic, and tell how you plan to design it. Describe your intended audience, tell how they will use your application, and indicate how developing this app will help you achieve the goals you had for taking this course.