Carefield
This project is being created for use in the Integrated Care Curriculum (ICC) modules within the department of Health, Wellbeing and Life Sciences. The ICC consists of 2 modules at each level of undergraduate study, the modules are all interprofessional so students from all the undergraduate health courses (physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing etc) will be taking these modules. There are approximately 1200 learning on these modules at each level.
Carefield is a virtual representation of Sheffield consisting of an interactive map containing services, community-based facilities, and case studies. It allows students to explore areas of Sheffield from a healthcare and socio-economic perspective. Its fictional case studies focus on patients that live in Carefield. Carefield aims to engage students from a range of professional backgrounds and can be used flexibly to support a variety of learning and teaching tasks and outcomes.
Potential Use Cases
Carefield will be used in the curriculum to foster students’ understanding of importance of interprofessional collaboration and patient-centred practice among healthcare professionals. It will enable students to look at the care needs of patients from a variety of socio-economic and healthcare professional perspectives (Physio, Social Work, Adult Nursing etc.)
Part of Carefield’s value lies in the fact that it is not a linear, stand-alone learning resource; its flexibility means it can be incorporated into teaching and learning in a variety of modules, at a variety of levels and to support a wide range of learning and teaching activities.
Timescales
Carefield is currently in its fourth iteration, but the current version has largely been developed over a 12 month period. There have been a number of challenges to this project with numerous changes in terms of academic staff membership of the project team and also the sheer scale and complexity of the project. A project of similar size and complexity would require a comparable timescale and significant cross-team working between DLT and academic stakeholders.
Client Involvement
The client involvement in this project has been considerable and varied, this includes:
- authoring case studies
- feedback on user experience/design aspects
- identifying which services and community assets were key to the resource
- ongoing regular meetings
- identifying intended learning outcomes so the build could be aligned with the learning outcomes