Browsing by Author "Topps, David"

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    Activity Metrics
    (2017-10-16) Topps, David
    Activity metrics, based on the Experience API (xAPI) allow you to track what your learners really do, not what their teachers say they do.
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    Digital Professionalism
    (2013-09-26) Topps, David; Powelson, Susan
    Exploring some of the issues around being a professional in today's digital world.
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    DynIA: Dynamically Informed Allegories
    (2015-03-05) Topps, David; Taenzer, Paul; Armson, Heather; Carr, Eloise
    An important strategy for improving population health is to use what we learn from medical research in our patient care. One approach to this is using the highest quality medical research to make recommendations and guide healthcare providers in deciding how to diagnose and treat their patients. These recommendations form the basis of healthcare tools that are called clinical practice guidelines. Theme four focused on strategies for increasing the uptake of clinical practice guidelines on low back pain and headache into community-based care. Theme four researchers collaborated with guideline developers in Alberta at the Institute of Health Economics and an organization called Towards Optimize Practice (TOP) that is sponsored by the Alberta Medical Association and the Alberta Ministry of Health (Alberta Health and Wellness). The research team first looked at what is already been known about uptake of guideline recommendations for chronic pain. This process involved going back to original research from around the world. Research librarians and scientists found 19 scientific papers that are relevant. Taken together, these studies indicated that the best approach to improving uptake of chronic pain guidelines into community care is to present them to care providers in special interactive educational settings where they are able to discuss the recommendations approaches with the educators. Theme four then went on to test this approach in the study of using an interactive educational workshop focused on the low back pain guideline. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta. The workshop presenters were an expert team of physicians, physiotherapists, nurses and psychologists that traveled to the offices of the community healthcare providers. This study showed that the providers’ knowledge of low back pain increased after the workshop. When the medical records were examined, the researchers were unable to detect changes in how care was provided. This was a small study involving 24 providers. The researchers concluded that a larger study may confirm the increase in provider knowledge and detect changes in care. An important advance in healthcare is the use of computerized medical records. Computerization also provides an opportunity for healthcare providers to access relevant health information during their time with the patient. Theme four researchers collaborated with the Department of Family Medicine that McMaster University to develop a tool to help community caregivers use the recommendations from clinical practice guidelines while they are in the office with patients. This tool called the McMaster Pain Assistant has undergone successful usability testing and is now being tested in the community to see if using the tool leads to increases in knowledge and decisions that reflect the guideline. Rural physicians face important challenges in accessing medical education. In the past they would have to leave their practices and travel to a distant site to learn. Theme four researchers collaborated with the Department of Continuing Medical Education at the University of Calgary to explore a distance learning approach using Internet-based webinars and “virtual patients” that are designed to teach about the guidelines and how it might affect their care. This preliminary study demonstrated that rural physicians appreciated being able to access high quality medical education where they can interact with experts without having to travel. They found the sessions and the virtual patients highly engaging and realistic. Only small changes were shown in management of the virtual patients through the case series. Detailed analysis of practice patterns showed participants to be very conformant with clinical practice guideline recommendations.
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    Exploring the Responses of Prescribing Pharmacists and Family Physicians to Common Cases of Ambulatory Conditions
    (2022-09) Chiang, Vincent; Hecker, Kent; Warren, Amy; Topps, David; Anderson, Sarah; Guirguis, Lisa
    Changes in the scope of practice of pharmacists have granted prescribing privileges to pharmacists in various jurisdictions. While seen as a natural progression of the expertise of pharmacy professionals by some, prescribing pharmacists have also been met with a range of cautionary warnings regarding proficiency and appropriateness because of the traditional training of pharmacists. Different models of prescribing pharmacist continue to be considered and implemented particularly regarding the treatment of ambulatory conditions, sometimes referred to as minor illness or ailments. Studies seeking to characterize the parameters of prescribing pharmacists with respect to ambulatory conditions such as clinical reasoning and clinical decision-making have been limited to using qualitative measures as well as focusing on a single prototypical clinical case. The following thesis describes a study which an online survey of multiple clinical cases of common ambulatory conditions was used to quantitatively assess the performance and behaviors of prescribing pharmacists in Alberta, Canada using family physicians as a comparison group. Participants were asked to respond to the clinical cases with diagnostic and therapeutic selections as well as report confidence in both selections. The prescribing pharmacists were hypothesized to demonstrate lower performance and confidence in selections compared to family physician counterparts due to aforementioned differences in training. The findings of the study concluded that were no significant differences in the diagnostic and therapeutic selection scores or in the reported confidence levels between a sample of prescribing pharmacists and family physicians. This research provides some of the first baseline evidence demonstrating the capabilities of prescribing pharmacists in the assessment and treatment of a range of ambulatory conditions. Future studies building on these findings should seek to understand how prescribing pharmacists can be better integrated into the healthcare system, particularly by using the methods of this study as a framework for the assessment of pharmacist in training and in practice.
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    OpenLabyrinth for Learning and Teaching
    (Taylor Insitute Teaching Community, 2014-05-13) Topps, David; Armson, Heather
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    Repurposing Virtual Patients for Scenario Based Learning
    (2013-09-26) Topps, David; Sharma, Nishan; Lee, Sonya; Aboulhoda, Alaa
    How to use existing virtual patient cases to expand into scenario based learning activities.
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    Scrivener template for IPH Catalyst Grants
    (2015-05-25) Topps, David
    I have recently been using a very neat software tool that I have found very helpful in assembling grant proposals and other academic writing: Scrivener. Product Website http://www.literatureandlatte.com Sorry, this is Mac oriented software. Originally, this software was designed for fiction writing and script writing. However, it has a number of features that make it a very useful tool for assembling your thoughts, notes and references that can then be compiled automatically into a formatted paper or proposal. As I was putting together an application for an IPH Catalyst Grant Proposal, I created a generic template for IPH Catalyst grant proposals that others may find helpful.
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    Virtual Patients
    (2011-11-05T19:19:37Z) Topps, David; Sylvester, Michael; Lee, Sonya
    The session will be a hands-on workshop giving each participant access to their own live Open Labyrinth account. Participants will familiarize themselves with the program by following step-by-step instructions to build their first basic ‘case’. By the end of the session, participants will know: 1. the advantages and limitations of the Open Labyrinth case-making software 2. how to create their first Open Labyrinth case 3. next steps in working with Open Labyrinth elements in order to complete an effective case