Clinical diagnosis online

Abstract

Students of natural medicine at Southern Cross University undertake a program of learning that encompasses both scientific and holistic approaches to health and wellbeing. Case based presentations in two inter-related units – Clinical Diagnosis I and Clinical Diagnosis II allow students to develop their skills in patient history taking, problem solving, differential diagnosis and treatment. This paper describes the progression of innovations in teaching these two units from fully face-to-face, to paper-based and CDROM structured case based activities, to an online version that is currently in place. Student feedback on both the CDROM and online versions is discussed and a statistical evaluation of student performance is presented to compare the impact of the two innovations in delivery.