Cancer pain is often inadequately treated because physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers fail to adequately assess cancer pain and implement effective therapies. Barriers to effective cancer pain management have been identified, and foremost is the lack of knowledge and skills. This project will develop a prototype compact disc-interactive (CD-1) education system that can be used to educate health professionals at multiple levels of training.The education program will use patient care simulations to demonstrate the effect of management decisions. A knowledge base in cancer pain management will be defined and developed and used to instruct the user during patient management problems. The patient management problems will serve to illustrate the major cancer pain syndromes and will be linked to the domains of the knowledge base. The CD-1 system will facilitate simultaneous high-quality audio, video, graphic, and text presentation designed to have high emotional impact and user interaction to promote effective learning.In Phase I, the knowledge base will be defined and developed and the entire educational program designed. One module that will serve as a prototype will be implemented. The prototype product will be beta tested and its educational effectiveness evaluated. This will facilitate evaluation of CD-I as an instructional medium for health education.
Anticipated Results:Health education requires major expenditures when performed in an expositive manner. Methods that facilitate self-directed learning and teach state-of-the-art techniques and knowledge while maximizing efficiency are needed. The CD-I medium provides a low-cost, standardized, interactive delivery system that can be used in a variety of health education projects.National Cancer Institute
