Peter Dada
The University of Medical Science, Ondo State, says it has begun simulation courses in clinical medicine for medical students.
Vice Chancellor of the institution, Professor Adesegun Fatusi, disclosed this while declaring the programme open on Friday, explaining that simulation training in medical education was one for skills acquisition and practice, error identification and mitigation.
He also said simulation also provides a platform for formative assessment, adding that it is an important development as it concerned the issue of clinical simulation, which is fundamental in the 21st century.
The VC, further said that the development was part of the varsity’s efforts to strengthen training, develop the competence and skills of the students.
He said “You won’t see anywhere in the developed country, where you train doctors or nurses without a technical simulation approach to it. Nobody trains a pilot with flying a plane by trying it. A pilot is being trained on stimulation, and that’s how we train doctors and nurses.
“In the 21st century, we need to give them the opportunity to clinical simulation, so that they can develop their skills, develop their competence, develop their capacity before ever meeting patients, and that’s one of the things we are doing in UNIMED.”
“The importance is that it’s going to strengthen the quality of our training before any of our students goes to the world. They have been very competent; they won’t go to the world and start to traumatize patients.
“We are not just doing this for UNIMED, we are developing standard training that any Nigerian university or any Nigerian hospital can come and benefit from. We are developing a formal certificate in clinical simulation as part of helping the Nigeria educational aspect.
In terms of the course, this is part of a whole enterprise and that enterprise is, one developing the centre, two, buying the materials or equipment. So, all of these, if we put it together, it’s over N100m that has gone towards getting to where we are today.
“We have established a clinical solution centre as part of trying to improve our training. We got funding from Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program. It has a fellowship that goes out every year for institutions in Africa to seek funding, to do something that is extremely important to move education forward”.
The Director, Center for Health Profession and Medical Education, Professor Kayode Osungbade, on his part, said the programme was the direction of medical education all over the world.
“In our own time, we were exposed to traditional teaching but over the years, medical simulations have brought some innovations to medical education. In other words, bringing students to the laboratory to practice medical medicines with mannequins through stimulations. Using mannequins and some items that can be mimicked. What we are here to do is to integrate what we are doing now into the curriculum of UNIMED.”
According to him, the training was not only for students, but for the faculty and clinical lecturers in facilities of medical sciences, dentistry, nursing, and physiotherapy.
“Beyond that, we plan to involve non-physicians in the CPR training at the later part of the training. We plan to bring people from society, physicians, clinicians and other paramedics from outside the university,” he added.
The resource person and Carnegie Fellow, Professor Olugbenga Akingbola, in his remarks, noted that the relevance of the simulation training was one way of helping trainees, medical students, nurses, and resident doctors to acquire life-saving skills and have the opportunity to practice until they reach mastery because medical education is apprenticeship.
He said, “When we train, we didn’t have a simulation centre, which means that everything that we knew how to do, we learnt it on patients. You will see that in that scenario, any form of error can be catastrophic.
“So, in many ways, stimulation is becoming a very important tool for medical education. The other aspect is communication and teamwork which often, is lacking in formal medical training. The opportunity to learn communication skills as a member of the health care team can be done in a stimulating environment.
“So, in short, the simulation centre provides the platform for skills training practice, error identification and mitigation and also, for effective communication among the medical personnel.”
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