6
COM Outlook . Spring 2014
New...Noteworthy
On February 8,
the college’s
Student
Advocate
Association
hosted a
special project
at NSU’s
annual CommunityFest, offering a unique
idea that highlighted the careers of the
Health Professions Division (HPD). Each
profession created a booth with a game or
activity that allowed HPD students and other
CommunityFest participants to engage in an
interactive learning experience that focused
on the variety of choices available to the
patient health care team. Not surprisingly,
the participating students enjoyed the
opportunity to work together and promote
interprofessional awareness.
OMS-IV Steven
Nuanes
appeared on
a weekly medical talk
show called
Radio
Rounds
in November,
where he discussed
examples from his
own training to
illustrate the unique
advantages and challenges associated with
osteopathic medical training and explained
how osteopathic physicians go back to the
basics in order to provide the best possible
care for their patients.
In January,
the
Florida
Bariatric
Centers
at Largo
Medical
Center
performed the first minimally invasive
robotic adjustable gastric band weight-
loss surgery in Florida. The surgery follows
they want; however, when used for
educational purposes, interaction must
be structured with well-defined goals
and objectives.
The Co l l ege o f Os t eopa t h i c
Medicine’s Virtual Clinic reinforces
the clinical-skills experience of medical
students during the Patient-Centered
Medicine course. Clinical scenarios
assess the ability of second-year
medical students to ask correct, open-
ended questions during a virtual
encounter with patients in the SL
virtual world. Student doctors create
their avatars and then fly in-world for
a virtual patient encounter.
The virtual Art Observation Center,
the second educational component in
virtual world, involves art from the NSU
Museum of Art / Fort Lauderdale that
is used for a Web module called “Art,
Medicine, and Observation.” The goal
of the virtual art gallery is to provide
third- and fourth-year medical students
with conditions the students can
diagnose by relating those conditions
to what they have learned from the
art observation session. The virtual
art center platform allows students to
practice their clinical skills immediately
by teleporting to the virtual clinic for
patient encounters at any time, and
from anyplace.
Marti Echols, Ph.D., assistant dean of
medical education, Elizabeth Oviawe,
M.Sc., M.M.I.S., M.S.B.I., NCP, assistant
director of data analysis, development,
and simulation in medical education,
and OMS-II Trevine Albert were
showcased in the story, which allowed
them to describe and demonstrate
the Second Life technology utilized at
the NSU-COM Virtual Clinic. A faculty
member from the Department of
Occupational Therapy at NSU’s College
of Health Care Sciences was also
featured on a related topic.
The educational project, which
incorporates human-controlled avatars,
offers interaction in virtual-land regions
where the avatars act the same as their
human counterparts in other social
networks. In Second Life, medical
residents are free to do whatever
NSU-COM Virtual-World Technology Garners
Local and National Media Coverage
On December 16, the Department
of Medical Education was prominently
featured in a news story filmed at
NSU’s Health Professions Division and
broadcast on WPLG Local 10 regarding
the college’s use of
Second Life
(SL) virtual-world technology
—a
Web - enab l ed , compu t e r - ba s ed ,
and simulated multimedia tool that
provides students and professors an
innovative way to interact, collaborate,
and engage as avatars.
Because the segment proved to be
extremely popular due to the intriguing
subject matter, a number of national
broadcast affiliates aired the segment
as well. WPLG medical reporter and co-
anchor Kristi Krueger willingly became
part of the story when her avatar, created
by the NSU-COM team, teleported on-
screen during the broadcast.
Dr. Echols with WPLG reporter and
co-anchor Kristi Krueger.
