Occupational Medicine Tutorial (Out of Print)

Abstract

Abstract Introduction The online Occupational Medicine Tutorial prepares students to diagnose occupational diseases in their patients. The material is comprehensive enough to allow faculty who do not specialize in occupational medicine to run this activity. Methods The tutorial is broken into three sections and is designed to take approximately 30-minutes to complete. The first section includes an overview of the importance of taking an occupational history, a list of common occupations, exposures and resultant diseases, and a methodology for obtaining a problem-focused occupational history. The second section asks the students to complete their own personal occupational history using the framework outlined in the previous section. The third section allows the student to work through one of two clinical vignettes. Results Both students and faculty graded the online tutorial favorably. Eighty-one percent of students rated the relevance of the online tutorial as good to excellent. Seventy-four percent thought the quality of the material is good to excellent and seventy percent rated the quality of the presentation as good to excellent. Faculty respondents were much more enthusiastic with 92.8% judging the relevance, quality of content, and presentation within the good to excellent range. Discussion After completing the tutorial students appreciated the range of occupational exposures and the importance of taking an occupational history. Because the tutorial encourages the students to take their own occupational histories, they are more familiar with the tools available to determine if a patient's workplace exposures could be associated with their presenting symptoms and illness.

Keywords

• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Material Safety Data Sheet
• Allergic Contact
• Glutaraldehyde
• MSDS