Project Charter Roughly Done!

I completed what I felt was the basics of my project charter. Although there is no point in posting the whole charter here I used the following framework in placing the information in the charter:

CONTENT

1 Introduction (introduction to the topic)

1.1 Sponsor: Western Infirmary (my sponsor)

1.2 About Private Medical Services Regulatory Council (important players)

2 The existing nursing refresher course (introduce the existing system)

2.1 Analysis of the current method (how did it run)

2.2 Business case: Problems with the current method (what were the problems)

3 Proposed System (how i plan to introduce a new system to solve the old problems)

3.1 Introduction (introduction to the system)

3.1.1 Objectives (measurable, specific, actionable, realistic, doable things e.g. Increase nurse participation in the course to 75%)

3.1.2 Scope (what i am actually going to do e.g. setup an access point for nurses to login to the course)

3.2 Project organisation (who is my team to develop this project)

3.3 Resource requirements (not only what were the resources but why we chose them)

3.3.1 Human resources (can be advisors, administrators or subordinates)

3.3.2 Material resources 

3.3.2.1 Hardware (servers, computers etc.)

3.3.2.2 Software (learning management system, Image editing software etc.)

3.3.3 Budget (how much will all the resources cost me in REAL money not virtual rupees)

3.4 Risk analysis (what are the problems that can occur from the organization, product or even the business environment)

3.4.1 What are the risks (list them out even if they dont come inside the purview of the above points)

3.4.2 Mitigation plan (your plan B for the what you will do to bypass the risks)

3.5 Work breakdown (very important to think about this. how will you break down your work into pragmatic parts?)

3.5.1 Activities (once you break down the work you get your activities. e.g. List the requirements of the software)

3.5.2 Deliverables (once an activity is finished you get your deliverable e.g. SRS or Software Requirement Specification)

3.6 Project schedule (how you plan to do all these activities there are many method to represent this. I used Excel to illustrate this)

3.7 Monitoring mechanism (how will your supervisor(s) monitor you throughout the project)

4 Parameters of measurement of success (what tool(s) will you use to show your systems performance against the older method/system. I intend to use a feedback form for the old and new students)

5 References

6 Illustrations (here I am sorely lacking. In order to do a good presentation you should have very simplistic diagrams in near lay terms so anybody can understand your charter)

I am not very confident of it. I have asked a few faculty members to help so lets see what comes out of that. At the moment only my Dad has some time for me! Without a doubt writing what you already plan to do is vital isn't it? You get more logical and sequential in what you plan to do and indeed what you cannot do!

Either way, I aint submitting till 30.9.10 @ 11pm.

Alhamdulillah.

Further analysis points to a one section pilot as being more feasible!

On further analysis each section of the NRC has more than 200+ lessons and nearly 90+ lecture hours. In a space of three months I dont feel I can do more than one section. I would choose section 2 (medical and surgical nursing):

1. Lecture Hours: 93 Hours
2. Lessons: ~300+
3. Instructional videos: ~ 40 - 50
4. Content: Since it is Medicine and Surgery I can write the content with the help of my nursing sisters so I don't go outside the scope of the nurses!

I send a mail to Dr Gominda. Here is hoping for the best.

What I have learnt is analysis of anything is certainly not a waste of time!

Section 1+2 of NRC should be more than enough!

Just finished a brief analysis and typing of 7000+ words of sections 1&2 of the NRC and I feel I have enough of information here to run a pilot. I dont think I have time in 3 months to do any more than this. This seems to be like a 150+ lesson project with instructional videos to boot not to mention the post test questionnaires. I hope I am able to get an internet connection tomorrow and send at least send what I have done so far (Sections 1-2, Lesson List) to Dr Gominda for some ideas and of course I hope he agrees that 2 sections are enough.

I hear the other two students are LMSing semester 2 of the BMI course so my idea should not be too bad.

With time running out I may have to start writing my project charter anyway. I pray that I finish before midnight on the 30th!

I should have a better analysis of what I am getting into by evening tomorrow.

Is doing the whole refresher course more than I can chew?

I am in the process of typing out and at the same type analysing and roughly filling the gaps the whole syllabus for the refresher course. It is broadly divided into five parts:

1. Fundamentals of nursing
2. Medical & Surgical nursing
3. Maternal, Child health & Gynecological nursing
4. Mental health and Psychiatric nursing
5. Pharmacology

I have now nearly completed sections one and two and at this juncture I have to reflect.

• There is quite a bit of content in the first two sections to design
• In order to do a quality product for the project I wonder if doing all 5 will be a good idea and whether it is really required
• For the pilot I could always use my own nurses
• The other two students in Informatics for Medical Education are covering the Semester 2 of this course which to me seems like about the same amount of work

Let us see what Dr Gominda says.

Delayed Blogs, Internet & Projects

Buddhist Statue in Hyderabad in the middle of a lake no less!

I realise it has been some time since I posted anything to the blog and the reason is I have been having some internet connection issues in Hyderabad. First of all let me summarise the happenings of the past week:

• Met Dr Gomina last week to discuss my project and literature review:
• I explained to Dr Gominda about what is happening currently
• Target now is to make a LMS to regularize 10+ years experienced nurses for registration (about 6000 nurses in Sri Lanka)
• I explained my experiences as a past co-ordinator of the existing face-face system
• Time is limited
• Syllabus cannot be covered
• Students are of different levels so giving the right lecture 'pitch' is difficult
• Dr Gominda's suggestions:
• A project based on the idea of "Can a part time face-face nursing course for private sector nurses in Sri Lanka be converted to an online course" is a good one and potentially marketable
• There should be apart from the text and multimedia content some sort of formative evaluation before going to the next lesson to make the student interact more and justify an online system
• A pilot project must envisaged.
• Systematic Literature Review
• Is a time consuming process
• Search for "online nursing course" for PubMed revealed about 700 results
• A systematic review will involve reviewing all the relevant articles ~300+
• Should take 2 months
• Called Prof Jayantha
• Not really a systematic literature review
• More of a literature survey with review of good cited articles
• I shall inform through official channels after eHealth

As of today 18.9.10 I hope to get a more stable route to the network and resume blogging but I have a few pitfalls.

• HINARI is non-functional
• Then do I just take articles from here and there and write a review
• First I suppose I better finish my project charter which I hope will be simpler. Even for that I need a stable connection.
• An extension would be nice!

Hyderabad is nice city with a rich history! I hope to post daily come hell or highwater so please keep tabs on my blog. I shall email as well!

Rikaz

http://rikazbmiproject.blogspot.com/

Retrospect: What have I done so far?

Let me be honest: I have not done much as of yet. The little I have done I shall now give the highlights below.

• Have been discussing with my project manager Dr Roshan for quite a few months now on what to do and based on the needs of my employer Western Infirmary, I finally decided to do something along the lines of:

1. Website for WI - General Information
2. Patient Education Area - Instructional Videos, Calculators
3. Price Management System - Simple Dbase for collection centres
4. Nurse Education Learning Management System for WI-NAITA (National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority) courses specifically the 3 year formal training to become a NAITA qualified nurse

• On further discourse with WI I find that we are also taking part in a larger plan of regularizing already established nurses in the private sector (about 6000 of them) who have 10+ years of experience but who do not have formal qualifications & that setting up a course for these senior students is of greater importance. I had already run face-face course for a similar cohort of students so at least I have the advantage of a historical control! I agree to change my ideas to accommodate this need.
• I had my first meeting with Dr Pandula who is in charge of the "Informatics for Medical Education" elective students. Very useful meeting him. I think one thing that came about (till I meet my final project supervisor of course) is that it better to focus on one thing and narrow the scope down. So planning out a project based on a LMS for the refresher nursing course would be considered adequate at least at this stage rather than trying to write up the project on the website, patient information areas etc. as I has mentioned above as all the salient features of those (e.g. content, delivery methods) would more or less be covered by this as well. Some things I gathered from this (based on the steps to a project charter)

1. Working Title: Blended learning approach to teach nurses in a private health care setting in Sri Lanka
2. Introduction:
1. Introduction to the background of teaching nurses via the blended learning method
2. Introduction the short course we have done already without any system
3. Literature review
1. Formulating Objectives
1. Go through the course
2. Make a list of things that have been done and divide the work to lesson, video, etc.
3. Formulate the objective of this project
2. Use a good search engine like MEDLINE
3. See if you can get the articles you need ~ 10 - 15
4. Then do a systematic review as competently as possible
3. Business Case:
1. Formulate a good feedback form which can be used for the previous batch who did not have a system and get their views
2. Discuss the issues brought up
3. Finally it should be the issues of the current system
4. Measurable Objectives
1. As has been told before the literature review we need to break down the course and see what type of objectives can be done.
2. I shall try to enlist the advice of our directors as well.
3. Measurably doing these objectives can only be done via the feedback form and its a more qualitative than quantitative review
5. Deliverables: I did not discuss this
6. Scope of the project: I did not discuss this
7. Parameters of measurement of success:
1. I suppose for the moment the working issue is the feedback comparison from the batch without the system vs the students who used the system
2. I can also randomly select lessons, multimedia instructions and do a pre and post feedback
8. High End Resources Needed: Not discussed.
9. High End Risk and Mitigation Plan:
1. Language Problem: Perhaps an accompanying booklet in Sinhala
2. Technical Problem:
1. I would like to conduct a Moodle training course before starting
2. Also students would still have to attend the face - face classes but the feedback will only be from the on-line one.
3. What would I do if I do not get the chance to conduct the blended learning course with the refresher students?
   
10. Sponsor: Well that I can do!
11. Project Schedule: Cannot be thought about until things like objective and deliverables are in order.

That is all I have done so far. As it stands I now need to:

• Have some sort of idea the work in this syllabus for the refresher nurses.
• Meet Dr Pandula and get a final idea of my rough objectives and get the basic idea of the literature review
• Meet Dr Roshan and get a basic idea of how to construct the project charter
• Meet Dr Gominda, My supervisor armed with this basic information to refine the rough stone into a gem! (Wishful thinking I am aware!)

So that is the retrospect. As of today I am busy OCRing the syllabus to take to Dr Pandula either today or tomorrow and then meet Dr Roshan and then Dr Gominda. I have been cut short for time as I have taken leave to assist my wife in her education pursuits in Hyderabad from September 12th - 26th so I hope all bear with me through email during that period.

MSc Biomedical Informatics: Final Project General Info

The MSc in Biomedical Informatics hopes students will become generally skilled in Biomedical Informatics and it has focused us on of three areas:

1. Public Health Informatics (Public Health)
2. Bioinformatics (All about the Genetic Code)
3. Informatics for Medical Education (My elective)

It is no 3 that I am following so I have decided to do a project on this area. Whilst doing a thesis is something new to me I have to start somewhere right? So this is what I know right now:

• The final project will run from September 2010 to December 2010. So this race has already started.
• The final outcome is I should have a running programme based on the principles learnt from the course and in particular Informatics for Medical Education.
• Documentation is paramount and in this regard I have been given the following deadlines:

1. September 30th : Literature Review (What does the literature say about my project idea)
2. September 30th : Project Charter (What will I do in my project)
3. Many Deliverables till the end of the project (Showing my supervisor my progress)
4. Project must be submitted by the end of December 2010 (Which is 92 Days, 15 Hours & 13 Minutes from this Post)

Here is me praying that this task will not be insurmountable.

Introduction: What is rikazbmiproject?

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night to the netizens who follow this blog (currently 0),

I am Dr Rikaz Sheriff. A MSc student in Biomedical Informatics at the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine in Colombo, Sri Lanka. My elective is in "Informatics for Medical Education". Apart from this I also went through a Post Graduate Certificate in Medical Education and it is there that I caught the concept of a portfolio.

So here I am. Posting away sweet nothings @ the moment. I have made this blog 'rikazbmiproject' with  إن شاء الله (God Willing) the idea of:

1. Tracking my progress in my final project in my MSc course.
2. Allowing my supervisors to track my progress and lambaste me when my posts are few and far between!
3. Develop an 'unofficial portfolio' of my thoughts so perhaps I can reflect on how I am approaching the task at hand.
4. Perhaps help others in this shameless public display of transparency!

Thats it. Wish me luck.

Rikaz