Executive Summary of the Quality Enhancement Plan

The Quality enhancement plan of the LSU Health Sciences Center will focus on the Development of Instructional Technology and Effectiveness. The Plan has had and will continue to have the active input of students from each of our Schools. The LSU Health Sciences Center consists of two campuses located in New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana. Because the needs of the students and the available instructional facilities differ slightly on each campus, the QEP for each campus is described separately.

On the New Orleans campus the Development of Instructional Technology will focus on four major activities. The first will be on the enhancement of the use of patient simulators in instruction. The Schools of Dentistry, Medicine and Nursing have recently begun to integrate the use patient simulators in their curricula. The purpose is to provide the students with designated patient care and critical thinking skills that complement their actual clinical experience. We plan to enhance this method of instruction in the curriculum of each School.

The second initiative will focus on web-based learning in each School. We plan to implement and enhance web-based instruction and testing. For example, in the School of Graduate Studies we will establish web based protocols for scientific methods and techniques.

On the Shreveport campus, the Development of Instructional Technology in education and integration of learning will focus on three major categories incorporating the schools of Allied Health Professions, Medicine and Graduate Studies.

The first category will increase the utilization of the Standardized Patients (SPs) for teaching patient care and evaluation of clinical skills by the creation of the new skills learning and testing center which includes the expanded use of simulators and models across the four years of medical school. Allied Health students will also be introduced to the use of SPs and simulated experiences to provide a forum for advanced clinical skills training.

The second activity will incorporate evolving technology in a learning lab facility housed in the medical library. As an extension of our computer use in medicine program, this center will allow students from all schools to have a dedicated space for access to materials such as tutorials, test banks, and virtual reality CDs. This will be linked to our medical school laptop program. Staff support for computer teaching will educate and foster the faculty acceptance of this project.

The third major activity will provide students from the School of Graduate Studies and Allied Health Professions with improved methods courses that will include hands-on instruction using our state-of-the-art Research Core Facility instrumentation. Other new courses will be designed to utilize graduate and allied health students in teaching medical students various clinically relevant, high technology methods and techniques.