About SharinginHealth
- problems
- our
solution - vision, mission,
and values - about
us - why do
the work? - background
reading & links
Problems
The world faces a severe shortage of health care providers, estimated at 3.5 million workers worldwide. The deficit can also be described this way – if we wish to meet the UN’s Millenium Development Goals by 2015, 3.5 million new health care workers must be trained by then.
from NEJM, 2007
This global shortage of health care providers bares extreme consequences and is very difficult to fix due to insufficient training capacity. These issues are heavily dependant on access to training resources (books, computers, simulators, etc.) and clinical educators. Challenges to solving the world’s shortage of health care workers and deficient training capacity include:
The high cost of learning materials – Paper textbooks can be expensive, difficult to transport and soon go out of date.
Poor internet accessibility – Affordable, reliable Internet access is a serious hindrance for many learners, and will remain as such for at least the next few years.
Information overload – There is much more information online than front-line health care workers need to know to provide adequate primary care. This can be overwhelming for people determining what to study.
Our Solution
SharinginHealth (SiH) exists to address the world’s shortage of health care providers by making health care education more accessible in low-resource settings. Our system provides learning institutions and health care providers with resources to increase training capacity for students in primary care, including doctors, nurses, midwives and community health workers.
Our primary approach is to develop open-access education resources and make them accessible via low-cost computers. Our information is available when it is needed and how it is needed. The model we use employs content and cases:
Content – Universally-relevant primary healthcare information, including text, images, and videos. As much as possible, we incorporate quality open-access resources created by others.
Cases – Country-specific healthcare scenarios to aid small group case-based learning.
Material is written by students and residents and reviewed by residents, clinicians, and professors before being placed online. In this way, we are endeavouring to ensure our material is relevant and appropriate.
The SiH learning system is completely accessible over the internet, as you can see on this site.
However, as many settings do not have high-speed access to the internet, SiH can also be uploaded onto computers, USB drives and tablets.
Examples of use include:
- facility/institution-owned devices loaded with SiH, for individual or small-group study
- students and health care providers with personal USB drives containing SiH, accessed on any USB compatible computer (perhaps at home, at a clinic or at school)
We've designed SiH to be used for small-group, case-based training, facilitated by accredited facilitator and incorporating discussion, role-play and simulation.
Moving Forward
We are currently working on two pilot projects.
The 'Top 100' seeks to identify, author, illustrate, and review the most important topics for primary care students worldwide.
Maternal and newborn health material is being piloted in Uganda in the summer of 2012, to assess our educational and technical approach.
What do we require?
As we move forward, our steps include:
- ongoing identification of priority topics and clinical domains
- content to be written (by students) and reviewed (by professionals)
- country-specific cases to be created
- relevant illustrations and videos to be found from online, or created
- partnerships to be formed
- faculty development for tutors to be offered
- testing carried out
We seek to develop partnerships with organizations who are already providing primary health care education. Working with partners, we will collaborate to identify equipment needs (computers, tablets, USB drives, and clinical simulators) and then establish solutions for providing this material.
Our next pilot project will take place in Uganda in the summer of 2012, evaluating our maternal and newborn health material with medical students.
Mission, Vision, and Values
Our Mission is to address the severe shortage of health care providers in low-resource countries by helping increase training capacity through the creation of training resources that can be accessed and utilized via the Internet, and on computers and tablets.
Our Vision is to see an increase in the number of health care workers available to provide primary care in regions where health care providers are most scarce. As a secondary goal, we also wish to see health care workers and students around the world working together and using technology to improve health care education to be more efficient and effective for addressing these needs. Built by students, for students, we depend on a global community to grow.
Our values include:
Wholistic healthcare: We aspire to train healthcare students to care for the body, mind and spirit. We welcome the contribution and perspectives of all students, regardless of race, religion, worldviews, or gender orientation, as we see no place for exclusivity, judgment, or condemnation in healthcare. SiH's founder and the members of its Board of Advisors personally endeavour to follow the principles of Jesus Christ, which demonstrate compassion and care for all.
Forging Partnerships: We do not wish to replace professors and institutions. Instead, we endeavor to forge partnerships and use the coordinated participation of students, residents, clinicians, educators, administration, and institutions to strengthen health care training overall.
Non-commercial: SiH subscribes to open-source, open-access ethics, and its resources can be used by anyone for non-commercial purposes. We are also completely not-for-profit, with no advertising.
Simplistic and Flexible: "Nothing endures but change," and SiH content and technology is designed to be inherently flexible to meet the needs of today and tomorrow, in various locations and situations.
About Us
SharingInHealth (SiH) began through the efforts of one medical student and has grown to include student and professional contributors all around the world. Please visit our contributors page to learn more about the many men and women who have joined our team.
Founder and Chief EditorSiH was founded in 2006 by David LaPierre. Currently, he is a senior family medicine resident at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, who anticipates achieving his full license in 2012. He reviews all topics before they are put online. |
Board of AdvisorsOur board of advisors helps with the overall direction of our efforts, and is comprised of:
|
Supported In Principle By
|
Supported Financially By
|
Why do all this Work?
Isn't it already being done by other groups? No (at least, not that we've seen). Some of the key differences of what we're doing, compared to other great online resources, are as follows:
Target Audience Level
Resources are typically aimed at residents and staff, such as UpToDate and eMedicine, or at the general public, such as Medlineplus or medpedia.
Target audience resources
Most resources assume access to high-level investigations and treatments, such as is available in North America. While it is important for all students to know about new technologies, it is critical to foster reliance on clinical assessment and basic treatments first. In the same way, current resources almost appear designed for specialist readers, rather than those in primary care, where needs are the greatest.
What's Covered
We certainly feel it important to teach 'the etiology of pneumonia' or 'the differential diagnosis of chest pain'. These are well-described online, the above points non-withstanding. However, what is less easy to find is information such as communication skills, clinical reasoning, health care advocacy, or even discharge summaries. This basic application of health care needs to be explicitly taught.
How it's Organized
Some resources are clunky to navigate, making it difficult and slow to find what you're looking for. While there is always room to improve, we hope our pared-down site makes it easy to connect with the information you need.
How it's Taught
You can't throw information at someone and expect them to assimilate it themselves; there needs to be some structure to teaching and learning. As one of the critical shortages worldwide is of clinical teachers, our cases are designed for individuals or small groups to go through the content, memorizing, discussing, role playing, and practicing technical skills in order to truly learn.
Our Interest in Sharing
We aim to package all our work together and give it away to whatever institution would like to modify it for their particular needs. The customizability will be incredibly helpful as new medical schools continue to spring up.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. Please send comments or questions to admin@sharinginhealth.ca
Thanks for your interest!
Background Reading
Our collection of links (currently quite disorganized!)
 |