The Treatments


Long ago at Cardinal, the boss summoned the writers to the general meeting area.

We were each given a college course textbook on Nursing 101.

Big Daddy told us he wanted each writer to come up with a detailed "treatment" explaining how we would present the content of this book using the DART audio-visual instructional system.

We were ordered to devise a general curricula approach (similar to Tom W's infamous "tree of learning" that he sketched for the automotive series).

With added gravitas, Big Daddy demanded that we propose teaching objectives and example storyboards for particular chapters.

Chapter One was about Body Alignment:  how nurses maintain healthy posture during the rigors of their work.  I imagined a nice model for this lesson.  Live shots of her keeping her back straight while changing  bed sheets.

Another chapter was not so attractive. It was all about Injections:  how intradermal, subcutaneous, and intramuscular shots are administered (someone suggested the use of fruit to simulate flesh). One writer went out and scored a needle one day and we jabbed it repeatedly into an orange.

The whole exercise was a Big Daddy competition. The treatment that made the most sense to him would be the blueprint for producing the a/v courses.

Apparently the client (a college, I think) was not impressed by the proposals. I suspect it was not our content (for we were a talented bunch) but instead the high costs of Cardinal production. We didn't just knock out training programs. They took months.

It was still another grand effort that failed and went nowhere in our attempt to survive.

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