The major purpose of this proposal is to develop and improve the teaching of the prevention of respiratory disease at the Medical College of Pennsylvania through an integrated, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive educational program. A secondary purpose is to conduct a study to assess an innovative method of education in the prevention of respiratory diseases. The objective of this proposal are to develop, implement and evaluate: a) a competency-based curriculum in the area of prevention of pulmonary diseases for undergraduate medical students and graduate physicians; b) interdisciplinary, teaching activities in the prevention of pulmonary disease; c) innovative pedagogic approaches to teaching prevention of respiratory diseases at all levels of education that: motivate students and residents to practice preventive pulmonary medicine; broaden the perspective of the faculty in managing patients with respiratory disorders and teaching students about preventive care; are transferrable to other medical schools. The proposed curriculum development program in pulmonary disease prevention will involve the Basic Science Departments, Departments of Medicine, community and Preventive Medicine (CPM), and Pediatrics at all levels of training. A comprehensive evaluation plan to assess changes in knowledge, skills and attitudes of medical students and house staff is described. The major hypothesis of the research proposal is that pulmonary educators provided with a teaching guide and active support are more likely to successfully integrate a prevention-oriented computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program into their curriculum compared to a similar group of pulmonary educators without that support and guide. The P.I. intends to conduct a randomized clinical trial assessing the introduction of a Macintosh-based CAI program on occupational lung disease developed by a multi-disciplinary team headed by the P.I. The end-product of the study will be a completed OH-CAI program with a teaching guide outlining strategies for implementation of CAI into the pulmonary curriculum. The evaluation tools used to assess changes in use of CAI by pulmonary educators are based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) which focuses attention of three dimensions of the change process as it is experienced by the individual educator.
