Tools for Supporting Students and Professionals in Medical Fields

According to statistics provided by the Higher Education Statistical Agency(HESA) for 2001-2002, approximately 10% of dyslexic undergraduates were studying on courses related to medicine. The majority of these students were on nursing courses. Evidence also suggests that people with dyslexia are drawn to people-orientated careers, such as nursing and midwifery (Sanderson-Mann, McCandless 2006).

Medical disciplines can causes particular problems for learners and professionals who have spelling and reading difficulties as they need to:

• read and spell accurately a large number of specific terms
• make notes and remember patient details quickly and accurately
• make quick and accurate mental calculations when administering and prescribing drugs
• learn the correct pronunciations of medical terminology

Learners on medical courses will also spend some time on placements where they may have limited access to technology and computers while having to work independently of support staff. However there are a growing number of handheld and computer based resources that can help them.

Handheld Solutions:

The Spellex Handheld Medical Speller provides a portable phonetic spell checker for medical terms. It also includes a calculator and a databank for storing up to 150 names and contact details. However this spellchecker is American and may not include all UK-specific spellings. It also does not have a dictionary or speech function so may not help those who find it difficult to identify a correctly spelt word from a list.

The Franklin DMQ-1870 is a UK spell checker and dictionary with speech feedback. It includes a UK medical dictionary as part its reference suit.

PDA-based Tools

Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs) provide an invaluable tool to those who don’t always have access to a computer. They provide many of the functions of a computer and diary as well as access to reference materials in a hand held device.

While students will spend some of their course on work placements they will also need support while completing written assignments on computers. There are 2 main operating systems for PDAs: Windows Mobile - a cut down version of Windows for PC - and Palm which is more focused on organisational tools. Both operating systems offer a wide range of software applications with medical applications. Which operating system you choose depends on your requirements (see our PDA article for the pros and cons of each system) but you can use PDAs for:

• taking notes on the move using a word processor or concept mapping application
• accessing databases and reference materials such as medical dictionaries, drug databases and journals
• internet access
• using assistive technology to read aloud text files or emails
• keeping organised with calendar and reminder tools
• make audio notes or record dictation for later transcription

There are many downloadable resources aimed at medical professionals for use on Pocket PCs or Palms.

Smartphones

PDAs are now being combined with phones - called Smartphones - so that you only need to carry one device. CapturaTalk uses the built-in camera functions of a Windows Mobile Smartphone with assistive software to enable you to capture essential information and understand text wherever you are. Take a photo of text that you need to read. CapturaTalk will scan the photograph, recognise the text and read the information aloud to you. It will also save the scanned file for future reference.

Computer-based Medical Resources:

Speech recognition software packages enable documents, reports, notes and emails to be created all by speaking. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional, Medical Edition, provides high-quality speech recognition with the added benefit of 14 preconfigured medical speciality vocabularies, making it quick and easy to transcribe medical notes and documents. When used in conjunction with a Dragon-certified digital recorder, such as the Olympus digital recorder, reports and notes can be created wherever you are working to be transcribed later.

Inductel’s Medical Dictionary and Speller is a stand alone US medical dictionary which includes UK specific terms. In total it includes 40 000 terms and it works on both Windows and Mac. Throughout the dictionary there are hundreds of anatomical illustrations including clickable graphics. The spell checking tool integrates 100 000 medical terms into the spell checker of common word processing applications such as Microsoft Word.

Spellex UK Medical Spell Checker integrates 300 000 terms into the spell checker of your word processor. It will work with most versions of Word (PC or MAC), Word Perfect or Pocket Word for PDA but we do need to know which program it is to work with on ordering. You can buy Spellex Spell Checkers covering more than one topic including dentistry and pharmacy.

References

Sanderson-Mann, J., McCandless, F.(2006): Understanding dyslexia and nurse education in the clinical setting. Nurse Education in Practice, 6 , pp.127-133.

Article last updated: 23rd May 2007