Theme
Simulators and Simulation
Category
Simulation
INSTITUTION
Facultad de Medicina. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Teaching Respiratory Medicine in the ambulatory setting with real and simulated patients was well evaluated by both students and clinical tutors.
Clinical tutors were able to identified teaching facilitators and factors that hinder teaching.
As most of doctor-patient encounters occur in the ambulatory care, undergraduate clinical teaching in this setting is important, thus increasing attention must be given to the evaluation of this teaching activity.
Traditionally, teaching quality is evaluated by students using questionnaires. This information is valuable, but, because of its natural bias, it must be complemented with students’ and teachers’ opinions.
Aim: To assess students’ and teachers’ views about the strengths and weaknesses of interacting with real and simulated patients to teach clinical skills related to respiratory diseases in the undergraduated medical curriculum in the ambulatory setting.
Qualitative methodology allowed us to contrast the information obtained from the students to the perspective of clinical tutors. This methodology also allowed to identify teaching facilitators and weaknesses. These teaching facilitators can be reinforced and the weaknesses remediated in order to potentially improve teaching and/or the degree of satisfaction of students and clinical tutors.
Quantitative methodology: At the end of the rotation students evaluated the program and the quality of teaching using questionnaires from 2004 to 2010. t-student analysis was applied; p value <0.05 was considered significant.
We are very grateful to Denisse Zúñiga and Gricelda Gómez for their support and assistance with the interviews. We thank Rodrigo Moreno, Julio Pertuzé, María Teresa Beroíza and Jorge Jorquera, members of the Respiratory Diseases Department.
I. Students’ perspective
Evaluation of contents
Students declare both to dedicate 6-9 hours per week of personal study and achieve more than 85% of the learning objectives.
All domains were evaluated with a score above 6.1 (1.0 to 7.0 point scale).
Evaluation of teaching quality
All domains were evaluated with a score above 3.3 (1 to 4 point scale).
In each dimension and in the global evaluation, no statistically significant differences were observed among clinical tutors or among the compared years.
II. Teachers’ perspective
Tutors identified teaching facilitators (some depending on learning module, others on students and on clinical tutors) and factors that hinder teaching (related to resources of the module, to students, and to clinical tutors).
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