Implementing a pathology wiki, a collaborative authorship, web based system to enhance pathology residency training
Best Electronic Poster - Departmental Web Site David, L., Gardner MD; University of New Mexico, School of Medicine; Matthew, M., Luke MD; University of New Mexico, School of Medicine;
Content:
Information is continually being revised, updated and refined. The ability to update and edit content is often limited by the static nature and single authorship of information delivery pathways. Having a system which allows multiple users to have collaborative authoring in a dynamic media would help speed information transfer to those needing it. Once such platform is a wiki, a website that allows visitors to edit and create content. Wikipedia, a web-based free content encyclopedia is a prototypic example. The experience of the University of New Mexico Pathology department in implementing a wiki website is explained.
Technology:
MediaWiki software from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc (St Petersburg, Florida) was used to create a wiki website for the University of New Mexico Department of Pathology . The MYSQL relational database management system was used. Content additions and edits were done by a simplified markup language. No programming skills were needed.
Design:
In August 2006 basic pages with minimal content were created with scaffolding. Twenty pathology residents and post sophomore fellows were given unique user names and passwords to access the site. They were given on-line instruction for how to edit and add content. They were encouraged to use the site to address the more common clinically related on-call issues. They added new pages as needed or modified existing pages. The MediaWiki software allowed for easy historical comparison of all edits.
Results:
All residents and post sophomore students viewed the University of New Mexico Department of Pathology wiki website and the majority added or edited the content. In 280 days the website grew from a single page to 480 distinct content pages. Individual pages were accessed 11,965 times for an average of 43 pages accessed per day.
Conclusion:
The pathwiki has become an asset to our pathology training program. Pathology residents quickly adapted to the wiki format and used it to share information among themselves. The ease of adding content allowed for rapid expansion of the data to include areas of interest outside the initial scope of the project. The ease of editing made updating the information a common practice.
