Telecommuniciation technologies, including audio and videoconferencing facilities, afford geographically dispersed health professionals the opportunity to connect and collaborate with others. Recognised for enabling tele-consultations and tele-collaborations between teams of health care professionals and their patients, these technologies are also well suited to the delivery of distance learning programs, known as tele-learning. Aim: To determine whether tele-learning delivery methods achieve equivalent learning outcomes when compared with traditional face-to-face education delivery methods. Methods: A systematic literature review was commissioned by the NSW Ministry of Health to identify results relevant to programs applying tele-learning delivery methods in the provision of education to health professionals. Results:The review found few studies that rigorously compared tele-learning with traditional formats. There was some evidence, however, to support the premise that tele-learning models achieve comparable learning outcomes and that participants are generally satisfied with and accepting of this delivery method. Conclusion: The review illustrated that tele-learning technologies not only enable distance learning opportunities, but achieve comparable learning outcomes to traditional face-to-face models. More rigorous evidence is required to strengthen these findings and should be the focus of future tele-learning research.Telecommunications are increasingly being used by the health professions to deliver health care services and to exchange health information across distances. Telehealth, tele-collaborations and tele-consultations are contributing to improvements in the quality, availability and efficiency of health care services to distance locations.1 Telehealth, for example, enables existing forms of interactions between health care providers and recipients to occur at a distance, through the use of telecommunications.2 Similarly, distance learning methods utilising telecommunication technologies are helping to overcome the challenges of engaging in traditional forms of education across distances. Referred to as 'tele-learning', it involves making connections among people and resources, and transferring images and voice data via communication technologies, for learning-related purposes. 3,4 Like telehealth, tele-learning utilises telecommunications to connect participants, helping to alleviate barriers to accessing learning opportunities and enriching distance learning experiences. The relative ease of use and availability of telecommunication technologies means that audioconferencing (teleconferencing) and videoconferencing are well established and frequently used communication mechanisms for staff in the health sector.5 For the purpose of this review, the term 'tele-learning' describes the use of video and/or audio-based technologies for distance learning purposes.Enabling collaborations between geographically distributed health workers makes the use of telecommunications especially relevant to ...

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Music Therapists increasingly work collaboratively alongside other professionals and families. This article presents research into transdisciplinary work with teaching assistants in a school. A mixed methods investigation was carried out to evaluate the development of verbal and vocal skills in young children who received both individual music therapy and additional music sessions carried out by teaching assistants. Qualitative data were gathered to support quantitative video analysis results. The Music Therapist organised music sessions for the teaching assistants to carry out independently, to assess whether this enhanced the children’s verbal development. Statistical analysis of vocal scores from video material utilising bootstrapping techniques indicated that there was a statistically significant difference pre- and post-intervention for the children who had additional teaching assistant music sessions. This indicated that the collaborative approach was effective in enhancing verbal skills. The qualitative evidence also supported this theory. Due to the small number of participants, these results cannot be generalised to other situations and larger scale research could be carried out to demonstrate conclusive results. This study shows that Music Therapists and teaching assistants in schools can work collaboratively and this may potentially enhance the progress children make, with reinforcement of verbal development strategies in the class context.

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works for East London NHS Foundation Trust where she runs the arts therapies service in Tower Hamlets and is a professional lead for arts therapists across the Trust. Her responsibilities include management, clinical and professional leadership for arts therapists of all modalities practising across a wide range of settings including adult mental health, older adults, forensic, learning disability and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). She is also a Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) visitor with responsibility for assessing and approving training courses in the arts therapies modalities.