Embargoed for Release
May 3, 1999
Contact: Laura S. Carter (603-650-7041)
E-Mail Communication Between Children and Student Doctors
LEBANON, N.H. -- Dartmouth Medical School researchers have found that e-mail communication between school children and medical students provides important learning opportunities for student doctors as well as potential health benefits for isolated, medically underserved pediatric populations.
Twenty Dartmouth Medical School students and pediatric residents exchanged e-mail with a group of children as part of HealthQuest, a tobacco prevention program implemented in two K-12 schools in rural Vermont. Over two years, 1,415 messages were exchanged between children, their teachers, and student doctors. The children quickly developed close relationships with their e-mail partners, and felt comfortable asking all kinds of health-related and personal questions.
"The e-mail communication provides important learning opportunities for student doctors in tobacco control, school health, relationship development, establishing professional boundaries, and in child development," explained Amy Bernhardt, HealthQuest project director, lead author on the study.
Questions students asked reflected their developmental stage, like "Why did they make cigarettes if they are bad for people?" With feedback, medical students adjusted their responses to the developmental level of the children.
In many instances, the medical students had to research the answers to questions, and several required collaboration with preceptors because the questions raised medical or psychosocial issues.
"We've used Internet technology to educate medical students," said Bernhardt. The e-mail communication was a component of the website developed for the HealthQuest program. "And the children learned a lot too. While this project focused on smoking prevention, we'd like to have a number of health programs to teach about nutrition, substance abuse, and chronic disease."
In fact there is already at least one doctor in a community practice who would like to be linked by a website to the high school in the community he serves, Bernhardt says.
Other Dartmouth Medical School researchers involved with this study include: James Sargent, MD, associate professor of pediatrics; Patricia Carney, PhD, research associate professor of community and family medicine; Madeline Dalton, PhD, research assistant professor of pediatrics; Marguerite Stevens, PhD, associate professor of community and family medicine.
In 1995, the National Cancer Institute funded Dartmouth Medical School to implement HealthQuest. In an effort to reduce tobacco use in rural school children, students designed their own tobacco prevention interventions by solving age-appropriate problems. Students delivered anti-tobacco messages to their peers through school presentations and at a year-end tournament.
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During the meeting, please call the Moscone Convention Center press room at 415-905-1001 to speak with researchers or [email protected].
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