Training and Assessment Center
The NUHS Training and Assessment Center (TAC) allows students to learn, practice, and be assessed on their clinical competence, specially diagnosis, and patient interaction skills. Through the use of the standardized patient program and digital recording technology, students can review how they appear to others, particularly the patient.
The centers at both the Illinois and Florida sites boast full digital capability, which broadens their usefulness and expands teaching and evaluation potential in the preclinical phase of the curriculum for DC, ND, MSAc, and MSOM students. Exercises in the TAC also help acquaint students with national board protocols in patient examinations.
Training and Assessment Center History
National University was the first chiropractic educational institution to develop and implement a Training and Assessment Center in its clinic, beginning in 1990. Previously the students were taped on analog equipment, and the tapes used for later evaluation.
With the advent of digital recording equipment, VHS recordings have made way for digital video cameras, easy file sharing via the internet, and expanded potential for TAC capabilities and usefulness.
Training and Assessment Center Features
State-of-the-art digital cameras and audio
Each of the 10 encounter rooms are equipped with superior microphones and digital cameras capable that can pan, tilt, and zoom. Zoom capability is sufficient to view a single mole or the tip of an acupuncture needle.
Flexible access
Recording to a digital file allows the student-patient interaction to be saved, copied, and reviewed easily by the student and several instructors, or replayed for discussion via computer projection in the classroom. The recordings can be copied to USB flash drives in just a few minutes so that students can review the digital images from their own computers for self-evaluation. Faculty can also view the TAC encounters from their offices either in real-time or as digital recordings.
Central control room
A control room computer monitor can watch live-stream video from any camera angle in any and/or all rooms simultaneously. The camera in each room can be ‘preset’ so the control room can shift a given camera view from the interview table, to the examination table, to the treatment table, or several other presets at the instructors’ discretion.
Intercom system
An intercom system broadcasts messages so an instructor is able to speak to a single room or a group of rooms. Students can respond or call directly to the control room without leaving the encounter-room
