Health care reforms must seek innovative strategies to provide quality-based cost-effective care in an era of high costs and dwindling resources. Case management was proposed as a way to facilitate the provision of such care in hospital and community settings. Specially trained professionals are needed in this framework for which the "Schoenbrun" Academic School of Nursing has developed a program in case management for baccalaureate students.

The program teaches students how to professionally approach taking responsibility for all factors of multi-disciplinary care, including the cost and benefit aspects of treatment based on the principles of case management.

Method

A 56 academic hour curriculum was developed based on principles of adult education. The program emphasized the various areas of responsibility of the case manager, such as case selection, identifying critical pathways, planning treatment processes, knowing treatment resources, identifying conflicts, and analyzing multi-disciplinary outcomes. The acquired information was applied to constructing treatment maps for chronic situations in the hospital and community, and three yardsticks were devised for evaluating the course: student satisfaction, sense of capability, and utility of the treatment maps developed by the students.

Results:

Between 2004-2007, 28 maps were developed for 23 representative situations. The maps were validated by comparison and evaluation of patients' files. The students scored satisfaction as mild to good, and a high sense of capability.

Conclusions:

An ongoing telephone survey is collecting data on retention of knowledge and skills in case management among the graduates after one and two years.