St Emlyn's

St Emlyn’s is a virtual hospital developed by educationalists based at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, England. Development was driven by the need to provide educational materials to a work force (emergency department doctors) on a 24-hour basis. It was ‘‘built’’ (with a grant from the NHS Modernisation Agency ) on the World Wide Web as a training resource for specialist training in Emergency Medicine in the North Western (Manchester) Deanery in 2003. St Emlyn’s currently has over 600 patients although not all of these are open to public access.

Initially St Emlyn’s (www.stemlyns.org.uk) was a repository for Problem-based learning (PBL) cases used in postgraduate teaching in the North West of England. PBL was instituted in the late 90s in order to encourage trainees to adopt a social constructionism approach to learning around weekly case discussions. This is a unique approach to postgraduate emergency medical education.

Large parts of the St Emlyn's site are open access. In keeping with the open access nature of most of the site, there are no fees charged for the training materials and users are encouraged to use the materials for their own teaching/learning practice.

The medical and nursing staff based within the Central Manchester University Hospitals are encouraged to develop and share their own learning and teaching materials with the site so they can be further used by others accessing the site.

St.Emlyn's Blog

In 2012 a blog was added to the St.Emlyn's group of websites. The Blog address is www.stemlynsblog.org The blog has reviewed by other sites such as Life in the Fast Lane. Www.stemlynsblog.org not only gives weekly evidenced based learning on emergency medical topics but also acts as an online journal club for those people not able to attend the weekly emergency medicine journal club held every Friday at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

Virtual learning environment

Initially the site grew through the acquisition of increasing numbers of clinical cases. In 2006 the site was further developed to incorporate a virtual learning environment based on the open source course management system Moodle. The VLE has allowed the original assorted cases to be themed into areas that reflect the College of Emergency Medicine curriculum. This is a unique approach to the delivery of a postgraduate medical education curriculum.

Further courses have been developed for trainees across all grades in emergency medicine. In addition StEmlyns acts as a hub for a number of evidence based journal clubs.

Case types

Cases are divided into the following types.

• Straightforward clinical cases comprising a clinical narrative, supported by images, results of investigations, correspondence and (in a few cases) sound files. These are used either as PBL cases or as cases to generate case-based discussions.
• Evidence based cases comprising a case short narrative leading to the evidence based repository at www.bestbets.org. The waiting room of St Emlyn’s Emergency Department is full of cases with a short history ending in a question — the answer of which (obviously!) lies in the linked BestBET.
• Cases of the Week (or COWs) — cases based upon the daily Board Rounds at Manchester Royal Infirmary that have a significant educational message

Organisation of cases in StEmlyns

The six core clinical modules are

• AcuteMedicine 1,
• Trauma,
• Paediatrics,
• Surgery,
• Acute Medicine 2
• Psychosocial

The three management modules are

• Emergency Medicine and the Law
• HR Management in the Emergency Department
• Managing the Emergency Department

The academic modules are

• Study design and execution
• Evidence based Emergency Medicine

Blog

In July 2012, the St. Emlyn's blog was launched. The blog aims to provide free open access medical education to emergency physicians, incorporating the latest research findings to facilitate translation of clinical research into practice.

Publications relating to StEmlyn's

The design and evolution of StEmlyn's has been described in the medical literature.

Advanced training in emergency medicine: a pedagogical journey from didactic teachers to virtual problems ^[1]

Developing a virtual learning course in emergency medicine for F2 doctors^[2]

Blended learning in paediatric emergency medicine: preliminary analysis of a virtual learning environment.^[3]

See also

• Manchester Royal Infirmary
• Manchester Metropolitan University
• BestBETs

References

External links

• StEmlyn's classroom
• St. Emlyn's Blog
• Manchester Metropolitan University
• BestBETs
• NHS Library entry for StEmlyn's