Welcome to Surgical Decision Making

The surgical decision making eLearning website is designed to enhance the 4th, 5th, 6th year medical students, and postgraduate surgical trainee’s understanding of clinical decision making processes. A highly interactive website was designed using both short case and tutorial teaching formats. Changes in students' knowledge about decision making and decision making styles are measured by pre- and post-MCQ tests.

The eLearning website is readily available to each medical student through blackboard authorisation. It forms a compulsory part of the student’s 4th year surgical attachment within Dunedin.  It is also available to 4th years in Wellington and Christchurch,  5th, 6th year medical students and  Dunedin surgical trainees. It ensures a safe and independently led learning environment that the students can access both within the hospital and at home via an internet connection at their own convenience.

The website is structured around the Otago Surgical Decision Making Model with tutorials developed to explain how each of the layers effect surgical decision making.  The short cases enable students to reflect on these elements of decision making in an interactive way.  They are based on real cases and ask students to make decisions and give them the opportunity to link back to the tutorials for more information on decision making factors.  Students who have interacted with the website have enjoyed the realism of the cases, and said that the cases kept their interest.

The website also allows the chance for learning about how students learn when engaging with a webbased educational format. As the student accesses the website, the pages visited and the path taken through the website is anonymously recorded. This allows us as educators the chance to review different learning patterns.

The Surgical Decision making website was created by the Surgical Decision Making Group with assistance from Susan Baxter (assistant research fellow), HEDC: Peter Vlugter (primary software developer), Ayelet Cohen (design), Swee Kin Loke (software developer and evaluation), Michael Winikoff (software developer and project management), Jenny McDonald (Academic Director of educational media).

Also in collaboration with Joy Rudland, Mike Tweed, Timothy Wilkinson, and John Dockerty, from the Medical Education Group’s.

This project was kindly funded by a CALT eLearning enhancement grant
(http://hedc.otago.ac.nz/magnolia/calt.html)