This collection of 3 CDs is the product from the Nightingale Project.

The Nightingale project is a EU funded project to contribute to the education and training of nurses across Europe in the field of Nursing Informatics.

Nightingale is an acronym for Nursing Informatics generic High-level Training in Informatics for Nurses general Applications for Learning and Education. The consortium includes 7 partners in various countries led by the University of Athens.

The pack contains 3 CDs

1. Multimedia - Electronic Patient Record
2. Nilexico
3. Transparencies
 

Installation

Installation was reasonably easy, but then setting up access to the program itself was a little more difficult.
Media player is required if not already installed on the machine (for CD1 ).

It was not clear how to start the program, once installed, either on screen or from the accompanying documentation. This can be overcome by installing  a shortcut button from Win 95, however you need to know the directory the materials have been installed under.

The program did stop in the middle or some actions, however this was probably because I tend to have multiple programs open on the machine and swap between them, rather than because of inherent faults in the program.
 

CD1 Multimedia - Electronic Patient Record

I could only find one section which is called Module 6 the Electronic Patient Record, which made me wonder what had happened to modules 1-5?

2 paths through the material are available;

• a series of video clips showing the progress of a patient through a range of settings and interactions with health care professionals and providing links to aspects of the record. This includes; patient diagnosis, first visit, team based care, decision support and other EPR uses (clinical audit, financial planning, shared care protocols, research and business planning), each video is supported by "key concepts" and a substantial glossary of both clinical and IT terms.

Figure 1 - Screenshot from video thread

• A lecture thread. This provides a series of notes on EPR principles and EPR applications topic areas including: healthcare record, paper vs EPR, EPR architecture, EPR and communication and EPR and confidentiality. There are subsections within each providing notes on relevant topics - many of the screens of notes being linked to the relevant video clip if required. I did note that a screen said that the topic of confidentiality was covered in depth in Module 4 however this did not appear to be available on the CD.

Figure 2 - Screenshot from Lecture Thread

CD 2 NILEXICO

This appears to be a lexicon of terms, using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel for different languages.

However, despite having all these installed I was unable to get the CD to run receiving the message "Run-time error 3228" "Selected collating system not supported by the operating system."

I will contact the project team for advice on this & update my review if I am able to access the program.
 
 

CD 3 Transparencies

This CD does not require installation

I only review the English version of the materials available. They are also available in portuguese, Danish, Greek and Dutch.

These appear as power point (although they are listed as DXR files) slides covering the areas; contents, introduction to nursing informatics, building nursing knowledge, informatics and telematics, Electronic Patient Record, hospital information systems, nursing information systems and organisational aspects.

Progression through them is by a mouse click however once within a section it did not appear to be possible to reach a particular screen by selecting from a menu.

The screen size that the transparencies had been made in did not appear to work on my machine - the logos at the bottom of the screen being partly cut off. They are blue text on a light watermarked background.

They may be useful to some teachers who are setting out to teach informatics for the first time and cover general principles, however I suspect many teachers would prefer to create their own and customise them to local systems and conditions.
 
 
 
 

Hardware Requirements

Minimal: Pentium 90 MHz 16 Mb RAM, 256 colours, 16 bit sound card, Win 95, 4 speed CD-ROM
Recommended: Pentium 120 MHz, 32 MB or more of RAM, true colour display, Win 95 8 speed CD-ROM
Requires an MCI compatible mpeg player (provided on CD)
 

This review was carried out on a machine meeting the recommended specification.
 

Contact the Nightingale Project

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Page Created: 27.10.99
Last Updated: 3.9.03