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Technology Trains Irish Nurses

In 1998 the Irish government's Department of Health decided that nursing education should be formalised at a university degree level. In 2002 six universities and seven institutes started running nursing degree courses, and this year the first graduate nurses will receive their diplomas.

To facilitate the teaching of its nursing degree, UCD had a new facility built at its campus in Belfield, on the outskirts of Dublin. The building has been fitted with a complete IP network, and thoroughly thought out training rooms have been set up to achieve the best nursing education.

From the start of the project UCD recognised the importance of the correct a-v installation to present and future education at the university, and it worked closely with TechCom consultancy to define its needs.

TechCom’s Malcolm Stafford and John Gillis, who have been working with the university in other a-v for education projects and understand the needs of lecturers and students, worked on the design and set up of the labs for three years.

After visiting other universities to see what was being used and assessing UCD’s needs and wishes for the project, TechCom teamed up with systems integrator Impact, which built, installed and commissioned the digital video/audio recording, streaming and archiving system, together with the control system and touch screens.

WHAT WAS THE IDEA BEHIND THE LABS?

The Clinical Skills Labs have been designed to look like a real ward. Six beds, occupied by very realistic mannequins are surrounded by all the medical equipment a nurse would use to treat a patient,’ explains Impact’s Eamonn Duffy, Ireland country manager. The only apparent difference from a real ward apart from the fact that the life like mannequins are motionless and a bit stiff, with a fixed gaze, is that there is a pan/tilt/zoom dome camera above each bed, which is connected and managed from a Crestron touch screen mounted on the wall by the side of the beds.

The university wanted a system that would allow it to evaluate its students in action and that would give it training options and flexibility. A digital media recording and monitoring system was put in place to allow students and lecturers access to lessons and exercises on demand.

We wanted to enhance the system for clinical skills training and assessments, but we didn’t want an off the shelf solution like other universities use, we wanted a tailored made one’, says nursing lecturer Martin McNascra. As the project was developing, more ideas and functionalities were added to the labs, making them unique.’

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Once in the lab, students can record their work for later review or to submitted to their lecturer as practical fieldwork. Using their university pass code, they can access the system and their files via the touch screens.

The software used on the Creston Isys G-Series 12in wall mounted screens, which was designed by Impact, is intuitive and easy to operate, providing all the functionality that student and lecturers need.

The Ernitec-Orion 161-22C dome cameras are installed at a convenient distance to the beds, so as to be able to evaluate the nurse’s assessment of the patient, which can only be achieved by walking around the patient’s bed.

The trainees’ body language and the way they talk to patients is also important and it is all recorded using the cameras and a microphone located at the top of the bed.

From the screen the students can pan, tilt and turn the cameras up to 360 degrees. They can also zoom to show small details, for instance how they use a needle for an injection and the way they handle the patients body when administering the treatment.

All labs also have a projector and a network cable that allows the lecturers to work with the a-v system. Material that has been recorded can be viewed immediately on the projection screen, allowing students to have a better experience by not having to cram around the bed, where their view might be obstructed.

On average there will be six students per bed at the labs. But if a lecturer wants to show something to the 36 of them, they can all watch it in a big screen. The same stream could be watched from any other lecture room or auditorium in the university and watch the proceedings remotely, ‘TechCom’s Adam Tatersall, an a-v engineer working at UCD, points out.

The information that is recorded from the practices is automatically compressed into MPEG-4 format and save d in a media server that resides in the a-v room. Students and lecturers can access this information via their computers within the university, to review it and edit it if necessary.

THE SERVER APPLICATION

At the centre of the media server is a Xentaurix Application Server, a digital recording system that allows storage, archiving, streaming and basic editing. Created by German company Artec, and introduced to the project by Impact, Xentaurix functions as an interface between the user, the streaming server and the storage system.

Any live broadcast can be directly addressed and archived. Users can view recorded content from any position within the video-data in a time-displaced mode, even during the recording of live broadcast.

The System is based on the Windows Media MPEG-4 technology and it is future orientated CODEC neutral. Using corresponding Plug in streaming formats like Real Networks, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MP-3 or H.263 can also be used.

Xentaurix allocates Meta data to the files, to make it easy to search for them by date, lab number, etc. Every streaming media product can be centrally remote administered and configured by the Xentaurix Application Server.

Students can re-name their files and the information can be grouped and send to lecturers for evaluation. Xentaurix also allows quick and frequent reports to evaluate the usage of the equipment and the success of the programme.

The browser based control and administration platform of the Xentaurix Application Server enables central remote control and configuration as well as an error-analysis of all streaming media system components using any Internet- access. In this way, Impact is able to remotely check and maintain the server and do all updates and repairs needed to the server or the Crestron units.

A-V AND IT KEPT SEPARATE

Although the system works entirely over IP and has a rich I T configuration, it works totally separate from the university’s IT network. The IT department and the a-v department did not mix for the project, if the a-v system needs to be disconnected, a simple plug can be pulled and the IT network will not be affected at all’, says Tech Com’s Stafford. At the moment, for security reasons, the system is only accessible within the UCD computer network, but we hope it’ll soon be available over the web so that students can review work at home.’

The way UCD has envisaged the use of the labs for an exam, for instance, is that they can be set up to start on Monday and finish on Friday and so the students can walk in the ward at leisure and record their work using the cameras and recording system’, says Stafford. Students will have access to the labs and system day or night and by the end of the week they can submit their work to the lecturers.

FURTHER USE

The whole project cost UCD over 500,000 Euros, but it is an investment that opens up new revenue streams for the University.

The labs can be hired to other universities or for particular events and they can also be used to record training DVDs. These DVDs can be used in the university for educational purposes or sold to the public,’ says McNascra .  

If the research department here wants to create a training DVD, they now have all the resources they need in the labs’, adds Tattersall. They can focus four or more of the dome cameras to one bed to get different angles. All screens linked to those cameras are then set to record and the recorded footage is then passed to the audio-visual department to be edited and turned it into a research document that they can use to show to students, hospitals or other universities. Overnight they can have a product ready for sale.’

The system also saves time and money for the university because they won’t need to rent expensive broadcast equipment and camera crew any more.

There is no need to book a studio and go into heavy editing,’ he adds. It’s all ready to use as and when they needed it.’ UCD also intends to provide distant learning training using this system, and the next phase will be to link the university’s new medical school currently being moved from the centre of Dublin to Belfield with the nursing education system.

We’ll have an additional three medical skills labs, says TechCom’s Stafford. They will be smaller labs, but we are planning to link all of the labs to the server. We can partition the server and have one part for medicine and one for nursing.

Article reproduced courtesy of AV Magazine.