How to Use this Resource
Thank you for downloading and considering the Health Case Studies open educational resource.
The resource you are looking at right now is not your traditional academic textbook. Almost all academic textbooks are linear and are read from page 1 to the end. Health Case Studies is not like that and is designed to be taken apart and each part exploited to support learning.
Health Case Studies is composed of eight separate health case studies. Each case study includes the patient narrative or story that models the best practice (at the time of publishing) in healthcare settings. Use the Overview page in the appendix for a summary of each case including scenario and healthcare roles. The overarching learning objectives outlined in the Introduction are suggestions for educators to expand the case studies and can be threaded into each case to fit the context of the learners and the curriculum. Associated with each case is a set of case specific learning objectives to support learning and facilitate educational strategies and evaluation.
The case studies can be used online in a learning management system, in a classroom discussion, in a printed course pack, or as part of a textbook created by the instructor. This flexibility is intentional and allows the educator to choose how best to convey the concepts presented in each case to the learner.
For example, an educator can use only the narrative to lead a discussion online or in the classroom on how interprofessional practice is modelled. In addition, educators can integrate other healthcare professionals into the case studies as required to enhance learning. Or an educator can take the patient chart and task students with developing an interprofessional care plan based on the information and forms in the chart. Even the text allows for customization. For instance, the date of birth for each patient persona is intentionally marked as “19xx” to allow the instructor to adjust the date as needed.
Because these case studies were primarily developed for an electronic healthcare system, they are based predominantly in an acute healthcare setting. Educators can augment each case study to include primary healthcare settings, outpatient clinics, assisted living environments and other contexts as relevant.
The intended flexibility allows educators to create learning opportunities to match the learning objectives of the curriculum and the needs of the student.
