The Center for Biomedical Informatics
State University of Campinas, Brazil


Research Abstracts


Distance Educational Programmes in Occupational Health using Teleconferencing and the Web: the Edumed Consortium Experience

Sabbatini, R.M.E 1,2.; Kitamura, S 2,3.; Santino, E. 2; Batista, A R. 2 and Dragone, P.L. 1,2

1 Center for Biomedical Informatics, State University of Campinas; 2 Center for Studies on Health and Work, The Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health; 3 Occupational Health Programme, Dept. of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

Address for correspondence: Dr Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PO Box 6005, Campinas SP 13081-970, Brazil, renato@sabbatini.com


The wide dispersal of occupational health and work safety professionals in large countries and subcontinents, such as in Brazil and South America makes it very difficult and expensive to provide continued education to them. This has immediate and long range consequences as to professional excellence, access to recent information and career development, particularly in areas of fast change in the health sciences. Technology-based distance teaching and learning is increasingly being used with success for the delivery of continued education. In this paper we report an initial and pioneering experience in Brazil, involving a programme in distance education in Occupational Health, which was established by the Center for Studies on Health and Work (CEST) of the Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health, a non-profit scientific and educational association which is responsible for the coordination of the National Consortium for Distance Education in Medicine and Health (www.edumed.net ), presently comprising about 20 educational and research institutions in the private and public sectors across Brazil. CEST/EDUMED is using a mix of Web-based and videoconferecing/teleconferencing technologies to provide high quality continued education programmes to Brazilian professionals. Three main initiatives were started. The first, course code EMC-004, is a journal club with more than 200 enrolees, with the following characteristics: every week, one of the course tutors choses a recently published and important paper from the international literature and occupational health and provides through a website (managed by TelEduc's web-based distance learning platform: www.edumed.org.br ) the full text paper, abstracts in English and Portuguese, additional comments and references, a topic for debate among the students and an on-line 3-question quizz to evaluate the apprentice's learning and understanding about the paper. In the second course, coded EMC-011, students who are preparing themselves for the National Board examination for the title of Occupational Medicine specialty and other public or private job competitions. receive specialized coaching and a review of the subject matter, by answering 20 multiple-choice questions per week, during 5 weeks, with automatic scoring and formative evaluation and comments; as well as participation in a "virtual class" (text-based webchat) on the Saturday. We are testing a new technology, audio and video webcasting of lectures and seminars, together with digital satellite TV via the Embratel 21 Institute's Digital Multimedia Library Programme (www.bibliotecamultimidia.org.br).  These events are transmitted at set dates and hours and can be watched for free all over the world. Lecture and seminar topics so far have included Work Related Strain Injuries, Noise-Induced Loss, Ergonomics, Alcoholism and Smoking in Work Environment, Common Intoxications, and so forth. Finally, CEST has been experimenting with interactive, dedicated videoconferencing using ISDN lines at the speed of 384 kbps and TCP/IP lines at the speed of 768 Kbps, to carry out seminars connecting together 4 rooms in as many cities in Brazil. We report here initial results, benefits, advantages and difficulties, and highlight a forecast of our future activities, which will encompass international collaboration as well.

Keywords: occupational health, distance education, medical education, internet, satellite, multimidia, WWW, videoconferencing


Presented at:
Annals XXVII International Congress on Occupational Health. p. SPS 69.3. Foz do Iguaçu, February 23-28, Brazil


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Last Updated: March 2, 2001

renato@sabbatini.com