Simulation, a tool for teaching practice in medicine

The conditions we have experienced highlight the importance of education through simulation in an undergraduate and postgraduate high specialty, where it is recommended that residents, according to their hierarchy and specialty, must successfully perform procedures in simulators before doing it on a patient, said the director of the Faculty of Medicine (FM) of the UNAM, Germán Fajardo Dolci.

During the inauguration of the "Fifth International Meeting on Clinical Simulation SIMex 2021", which has been held for the last five years and on this occasion at a distance for the second consecutive year, he indicated that its objective is to reflect, learn and share what is related to this topic in the clinical, managerial, assistance, management and communication areas with patients and family members.

It should be noted that this technology is becoming increasingly important in teaching and medical practice. It consists of various resources such as human-like dolls with which to practice from the care of a heart attack to childbirth; screens to see the inside of certain organs with precision and close-up; interactive whiteboards to exchange knowledge with an expert; computer and robotic telemedicine equipment to perform remote operations, among others.

In the keynote lecture "Challenges of Health Education", the head of the Coordination of the Open University, Educational Innovation and Distance Education (CUAIEED), Melchor Sanchez Mendiola, stated: 80 percent of medical education is focused on the biological, while 60 percent of premature deaths are due to "non-biological", behavioral factors. "Eighty percent of clinical education occurs in hospital settings, and between 80 and 90 percent of medicine is practiced in outpatient settings," he said.

Meanwhile, the medical knowledge duplication time in 1950 was 50 years; in 1980 it was seven; in 2010 it was 3.5 and in 2020 it is estimated that it will be two (73 days). Among the challenges that medical educators seek to solve, Sanchez Mendiola highlighted the new patient-centered forms; how to exclude redundant information from the curriculum; creating medical schools; adapting free online courses (MOOCs) to these teaching centers and shortening the training time for students.

One of the biggest challenges posed by the pandemic is the worsening digital divide, where the status of digital spaces is changing from a convenience to a necessity. Moments earlier, the vice president of the European Simulation Society, Esther León Castelao, said that simulation is a consolidated body of knowledge, increasingly known and used in the teaching of medical practice. Although it serves as a teaching methodology and evaluation tool, it is still necessary to assess its competencies in research, through in vitro models and for teachers to have solid training where the evidence is known.

For the vice-president of the Latin American Federation of Clinical Simulation and Patient Safety, Diego Andrés Díaz-Guío, it is an educational mediation between the classroom and the clinical practice areas. "It is an activity that allows the construction of learning in a collaborative, social way, with a safe environment for those who learn, those who teach, and for the patients." SIMex 2021 convenes to share and reflect on diverse teaching practices and invites to face challenges such as the health emergency, which has left thousands of students out of practice.