Clinical skills learning is an important part of medical education. In the last years, simulation has become a very important teaching tool in this process. Following current trends in medical education, we started an active clinical skills teaching approach in 2010 when our faculty obtained a fully equipped clinical skills laboratory where medical students can practice some of the basic procedures in a safe and controlled environment even before they approach the patients on the wards.
Clinical skills competency learned in this manner can be evaluated in different ways. One of them is an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), which is a modern clinical skills evaluation tool. The first OSCE at our faculty was conducted in November 2010 in an elective subject Selected topics and novelties in propedeutics. The first OSCE was composed of six selected stations and performed in two days. All the participating students successfully passed the examination. Until present, we have organized several different OSCEs, the largest one being organized for 70 students in a subject Internal medicine and propedeutics.
Clinical skills teaching in our clinical skills laboratory is currently incorporated in several different subjects:
- First aid,
- Internal medicine and propedeutics (Photo 1),
- Selected topics and novelties in propedeutics,
- Family medicine,
- Internal medicine – practical internship,
- Anaesthesiology,
- Emergency medicine,
- etc.
Photo 1: Peer tutors training.
Students can practice different clinical skills:
- venepuncture,
- infusion set-up,
- peripheral venous cannulation,
- arterial blood gas sampling,
- non-invasive blood pressure measurement,
- basic life support,
- intramuscular and subcutaneous injection application,
- rectal examination,
- bladder catheterisation,
- abdominal ultrasound examination (Photo 2),
- etc.
Photo 2: Abdominal ultrasound examination.
We are also organizing occasional clinical skills workshops, which enable our medical students to deepen their knowledge and competences in their field of interest. Below this text, you can find some photos from our clinical skills laboratory.
Photo 3: Peer tutors training – history taking.
Photo 4: Peer tutor performing clinical examination of the abdomen.
Photo 5: Peer tutor performing cardiovascular examination.
Photo 6: Peer tutor performing basic life support.
Photo 7: Peer tutors performing bladder catheterization.
