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Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer Application in Medical Care logoLink to Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer Application in Medical Care
. 1990 Nov 7:483–487.

Computer-Based Exercises in Anemia and Chest Pain Diagnosis: An Interim Evaluation of the PlanAlyzer Project

Harold C Lyon Jr, James C Healy, James R Bell, Joseph F O'Donnell, Frank Hirai, Margaret Moore-West, Gibbons G Cornwell, W Blair Brooks, Kent A Spackman, J Robert Beck
PMCID: PMC2245481

Abstract

PlanAlyzer is a microcomputer-based, self-paced, case-based, event-driven system for medical education. Aimed at the second year medical student, PlanAlyzer presents cases, elicits and critiques a student's approach to the diagnosis of two common medical disorders: anemias and chest pain. PlanAlyzer uses text, hypertext, images and critiquing theory. Students were randomized, one half becoming the experimental group who received the interactive PlanAlyzer cases in anemia, the other half becoming the controls who received the exact same content material in a text format. Later in each year there was a crossover, the controls becoming the experimentals for a similar intervention with the cardiology PlanAlyzer cases. Preliminary results at the end of the first two trials shows that the programs have achieved most of the proposed instructional objectives, plus some significant efficiency and economy gains. 96 faculty hours of classroom time were saved by using PlanAlyzer in their place, while, maintaining high student achievement. In terms of student proficiency and efficiency, the 176 students in the trial were able to accomplish the project's instructional objectives, and the experimentals accomplished this in less time than the controls. The research suggests additional inquiry in several areas: better evaluation instruments to measure the problem solving skills PlanAlyzer was designed to teach; use of hypertext PlanAlyzer cases to find if such a mode results in performance and/or efficiency differences; through the addition of interactive video, broaden PlanAlyzer to include additional behaviors subsumed under the topic of clinical problem solving, such as patient management strategies and the role of patients' affective behavior and non-verbal cues in the data gathering process.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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