The mission of the Bachelor of Science program in Nuclear Medicine Technology at Oregon Institute of Technology is to provide graduates with the knowledge and clinical skills necessary to become competent, ethical and caring professionals in the field of nuclear medicine.

• The program prepares students to perform as compassionate and caring health care professionals.
• The program prepares our graduates to sit for the ARRT and NMTCB board exams.
• The program prepares students who think critically, communicate effectively and demonstrate professional ethics.
• The program prepares students to utilize diagnostic techniques, sound judgment and good decision making to provide patient services.
• The program prepares students to be aware of radioactive exposure to themselves and patients.

1. The student will demonstrate proficiency in providing patient care.
2. The student will demonstrate knowledge of radiation safety precautions and ALARA concepts.
3. The student will demonstrate recognition of, and adherence to, ethical and professional responsibilities.
4. The student will perform nuclear medicine imaging procedures according to program and/or departmental protocol.
5. The student will demonstrate proficiency in obtaining a relevant patient history.
6. The student will demonstrate knowledge of various radiopharmaceuticals and their uses in nuclear medicine imaging.
7. The student will demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and appropriate uses of instrumentation used in a nuclear medicine department.
8. The student will demonstrate knowledge of quality control procedures for instrumentation used in nuclear medicine.
9. The student will demonstrate knowledge of radiation therapy procedures used in nuclear medicine.

During the 2007-08 academic year, the Nuclear Medicine faculty formally assessed the student learning outcomes summarized below.  Additional details can be found in the attached assessment report and in department assessment records.

Student Learning Outcome #1: The student will demonstrate proficiency in providing patient care.

Strengths: All of the students in our junior class exceeded the minimum performance criteria and demonstrated excellent skills in taking an exhaustive and accurate patient history in a reasonable amount of time. All of our Externship students exceeded the minimum acceptable performance of at least 80% on category item #14: Interpersonal Relationships/Patient Care on their professional evaluation. This evaluation was administered by the students' clinical instructor at that hospital.

Areas needing improvement: There were no areas for SLO #1 that required or demonstrated the need for improvement at this time.

Student Learning Outcome #6: The student will demonstrate knowledge of various radiopharmaceuticals and their uses in nuclear medicine imaging.

Strengths: The students demonstrated strengths in the areas of methods of localization, critical organ exposure, and radiopharmaceutical QC for this SLO.

Areas needing improvement: Modes of Production seemed to be the weakest area for our students for this SLO.

Plans for improvement: Our short term plan for this term is to have the students review this material and give an exam to these students again this term and re-evaluate. Our longer term plan for next year is to incorporate more of an emphasis in lecture on the various areas of radiopharmaceuticals and their uses in subsequent courses from which the material was originally taught. In addition, we plan to incorporate questions on quizzes and exams that directly relate to this material. The course in which we plan to implement this process will be NMT 311, 312 and 313.

Student Learning Outcome #7: The student will demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and appropriate uses of instrumentation used in a nuclear medicine department.

Strengths: The strengths identified for this SLO were: understanding of collimators and well counter and dose calibrator QC. The students performed very well in demonstrating their knowledge, understanding and uses for these types of instrumentation.

Areas needing improvement: The areas of gas detectors and gamma camera instrumentation were the weakest areas revealed by this assessment; particularly for the junior students.

Plans for improvement: For the junior students this term, we plan to have the students review the material on these sections and ask similar questions again before the end of this term. We will continue to ask questions on this material while they are on their 11 month externship in the NMT 410 course this coming academic year. In addition, we plan to incorporate similar questions on subsequent exams and quizzes for our junior students next year in the NMT 311, NMT 312, and NMT 325 courses. 

For our senior externship students, we have one more test to administer to our Externship students in the NMT 410 Externship course. We plan to add ten more similar questions based on Well counter and Dose calibrator quality control and Gas detectors and see how the students perform. 

We intend to review and assess Nuclear Medicine instrumentation material for the junior standing students next year as well as those who are going to be on externship in the NMT 410 course. This will include having the students review the material and then test them on that material in addition to the material we will be covering in that particular course.  In addition, we plan to develop technical manuals for checking in radioactivity, doing surveys and wipe testing, and getting radioactivity from the hospital. The students will be able to review these manuals to improve their knowledge of these procedures and concepts.

Institutional ISLO #8: Critical Thinking

Strengths:  There were six performance criteria for this assessment and the students exceeded the minimum acceptable performance of at least 80% in each of the categories except one. The students were able to identify the problem/issue, recognize contexts, acknowledge other perspectives, evaluate assumptions, and evaluate the evidence. Four of the six categories the students scored 100%.

Areas needing improvement:  The students scored 73.3% on the performance criteria of: Evaluates implications, conclusions, and consequences of the data. This was below the minimum performance criteria of at least 80%. As it applies to our assessment, the students seems to be able to identify the study on the lab practical, recognize contexts and other perspectives and they also did well in evaluating assumptions for the study they were performing as well as processing the data. However, when it came down to "what does this result mean for the patient or what are the consequences of a positive or negative result", they struggled a little bit here.

Plans for improvement:  The faculty recommends the following changes: 

1. In the lab, once the processed data is completed, we will require the students to discuss the implications and consequences of the results if any.
2. In the lectures for these courses, which will include NMT 311, NMT 312, NMT 313, NMT 325 and NMT 367, when we discuss the images, we will include a discussion of the implications and consequences of the results and what they mean for the patient. On the quizzes and exams for each of these courses, we will incorporate 10% of the questions to include scenarios in Nuclear Medicine and the implications and consequences of those scenarios. These scenarios will include challenging patients who may require therapeutic options and other correlating exams.

Student Learning Outcome #6: The student will demonstrate knowledge of various radiopharmaceuticals and their uses in nuclear medicine imaging.

I repeated the assessment of SLO #6 for my junior and senior externship students in the NMT 325 and NMT 410 courses. For the junior students, the scores improved across the board in all performance categories and the students met the minimum performance criteria of at least an 80% in each category. Therefore, no further action is required at this time. For the senior students on externship in the NMT 410 course, they also improved their scores across the board and met the minimum performance criteria of at least an 80% in all performance criteria. Therefore, no further action is required at this time either.

Student Learning Outcome #7: The student will demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and appropriate uses of instrumentation used in a nuclear medicine department.

This assessment revealed that the junior students in the NMT 325 course met the minimum performance requirements for two of the categories (Collimators and Gamma Camera Instrumentation) but still failed to meet them in the other two categories (Well counter/Dose calibrator QC and Gas Detectors). In these two categories, the scores improved (Well Counters/Dose Calibrator QC 46.7% to 66.7% and Gas Detectors 33.3% to 73.3%) but they were still below the minimum performance criteria of at least 80%.

This assessment also revealed that the senior externship students in the NMT 410 course improved their scores to at least an 80% in each of the performance criteria categories except the last one: Gas Detectors (31.6% to 73.7%). Since they are all graduating and completing their externship training in the next two weeks, I am not too concerned about this result nor will I have much opportunity to re-assess this area again before they are done. I will encourage them to review this material once again as they prepare for their national board exams.

To summarize, some improvement occurred simply by having the students review the material on their own without additional class time review, but more work is needed for future assessment and success as outlined in the SLO #7 Outcome Assessment Summary: Actions to be Taken 5/1/2008.