Professor seeks to fill knowledge gap
A UCF professor is in the midst of helping to develop a national database of self-learning modules to teach medical students how to treat patients with mental illnesses.
“Let’s say a student gets through a psychiatry clerkship and never sees a case of dementia,” said Dr. Martin Klapheke, professor of psychiatry and co-chair of the Clinical Simulation Initiative Task Force for the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry.
“The module that I have just completed will take them 45 minutes to complete, and it takes them through a case of dementia step-by-step.”
Klapheke first came up with the idea to create these modules more than a year ago with his colleague, Dr. Howard Liu of the University of Nebraska. Since then, five of the 14 major psychiatric conditions have been made into self-learning modules and the ADMSEPawarded Klapheke’s team the Outstanding Innovation in Medical Education Poster Award.
“They felt what we were doing was an innovative way of addressing a need in medical education,” Klapheke said.
According to Klapheke, he would be nowhere without the help of hisUCF colleagues. Dale Voorhees, director of learning systems of the College of Medicine, assisted with the filming and editing of the video portions of the modules, website development and designing the winning poster.