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
