Authors
  • Jose Pereira1,
  • Michael Aherne2,
  • Jaci Lyndon1
Organisations
  • University of Calgary1,
  • University of Alberta2
Year

2004

Excerpt

Journal clubs are a well-established teaching-learning tool for health care practitioners. They focus on using peer- reviewed clinical information in the teaching-learning transaction and reinforce the practice of thoughtfully integrating new evidence as a hallmark of continuous improvement in professional practice. Journal clubs designed with special attention to flexibility in delivery and sensibility of the demands of busy clinical practice also provide a potential vehicle for supporting health care practitioners throughout their careers. The broad adoption of web-based communication technologies by health care practitioners and the growth in robust computer mediated conferencing (CMC) software applications create new opportunities for practitioners to reflect on their experience in dialogue with colleagues, while critically reflecting on the impact of new evidence on their practice.

One component of the Canadian Pallium Project's, Rural Palliative Network (RPN), is an Online Journal Club (OJC) that uses the World Wide Web to facilitate professional enrichment, development and community

building at a distance. The OJC is designed to engage primary-care palliative care service providers and academic colleagues in critical reflection and discussion about peer-reviewed articles, and challenge the ways practitioners approach palliative practice. The RPN Online Journal Club facilitates lifelong learning, knowledge dissemination, professional community, building, and local clinical leadership development by engaging primary health care professionals as local opinion leaders.

This presentation will focus on Pallium's web-based Online Journal Club as a model for a building an online palliative care Community of Practice (CoP). It will focus on evaluation results from the demonstration and insights that are being used to design future OJC sessions. It will be of particular interest to academics and isolated health care professionals who are seeking flexible options for using information and communication technology (ICT) to promote lifelong learning in palliative care.