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Patient Education Network
Princess Margaret Hospital
Oncology Interactive Education Series (OIES)
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Research and Evaluation
Early evaluation suggests that our computer-based Patient Education Network successfully empowers patients by helping them to better understand the medical culture and assume more responsibility for their learning by promoting "education on demand." The informational and supportive value of the OIES was seen as especially valuable to users. One breast cancer patient explained: "It [the program] answers questions you forget to ask when you go in to see the doctor. They are so busy. You don't feel that you are taking up valuable time that isn't worthy. You don't feel like you are imposing. It's your time!" Learning is less bound by time and place, and experts around the world are available to the learner anywhere and anytime via the Internet. The OIES is a welcoming, accessible, attractive, and easily understood tool that bridges gaps between users' understandings of medicine and cancer.
A complementary strategy of ongoing formative evaluation is underway to ensure that continued program development is driven by user (and other stakeholder) opinions of the program's strengths and weaknesses. Continued formative and summative evaluation of our program is key to its future expansion both within PMH and to different sites throughout the UHN. Users found the OIES to be clear and easy to understand (4.7 on a 5 point scale) and more useful to much more useful (61%) than other sources of information they had accessed. Animations were deemed to be a particularly helpful resource to our users.
Currently we are investigating the roles that computer based education programs can play in development process in the context of our program, and clarifying the individual, structural and political issues that impinge upon the development, implementation and evaluation of these programs in our setting. For example, we have just completed a semi-structured interview study with 100 patients investigating their attitudes and experiences with the Patient Education Web site. We are currently investigating patterns of home use of the OIES software borrowed from our library.
For more information on the OIES, visit www.OncologyInteractive.com.
