Neurology video database
7 January 2011
The Media Resources Centre, working with senior clinicians and academics in the School of Medicine's Clinical Video Research Group, is creating a database of video recordings of neurology patients to help in learning, teaching and research.
The database pilot sees Media Resources Centre staff attending weekly sessions with patients who have presented to neurologists with episodic phenomena (conditions such as epilepsy, blackouts, fits, hallucinations and psychosis), and filming the patients' narrative.
The database will enable future neurology students to view – in the patients' own words – their symptoms and descriptions of what happened to them. In this case, the patients are the best teachers, as such episodic phenomena rarely happen during a hospital appointment. Specialists have to go on what the patient describes, some time after the original episode, when a single word or phrase could be the key to unlocking a diagnosis.
The neurology department will be able to use the database, which is believed to be the first of its kind, in learning, teaching and research, particularly to describe rare conditions that students may not experience during their studies. The database also illustrates the benefits of narrative-based medicine.
The neurology video database project is creating a valuable tool for the future study of episodic phenomena.
Find out more...