Research article summary:

Teaching first-year medical students physiology: does the human patient simulator allow for more effective teaching?

Abstract Extract:
BACKGROUND: Although the Human Patient Simulator (HPS) is an effective teaching tool in many medical fields, literature supporting its use in the teaching of physiology to medical students is lacking. This study investigated the effectiveness of ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2002May in Journal: Singapore Med J (Language : eng)

Full Pubmed Extract

This information was retrieved, real-time, on your behalf from the public area of the Pubmed website:

1. Singapore Med J. 2002 May;43(5):238-42

Teaching first-year medical students physiology: does the human patient simulator allow for more effective teaching?

Tan GM, Ti LK, Suresh S, Ho BS, Lee TL

Department of Anaesthesia, National University Hospital, Singapore.

BACKGROUND: Although the Human Patient Simulator (HPS) is an effective teaching tool in many medical fields, literature supporting its use in the teaching of physiology to medical students is lacking. This study investigated the effectiveness of HPS-based teaching of cardiovascular physiology to first-year medical students. METHODS: Two hundred and ten first-year medical students were scheduled to our HPS laboratory with the purpose of demonstrating "physiology in action". Students were divided into groups of 19-25 each, and attended a lecture followed by a HPS session. Using a theatre-type simulator complete with mannequin, anaesthesia machine and monitors (METI, Sarasota FL), the scenarios of hypovolaemia, sepsis, and cardiac failure were run to demonstrate the physiological changes that occur with changes in preload, afterload, and cardiac contractility. Each student was given a true/false test before, and again after the HPS session, followed by a survey of their learning experience. RESULTS: There was marked improvement in test scores after the HPS session (82.1% vs. 64.6%, P < 0.001). Most of the students felt that HPS was a better teaching tool (94.5%) and raised more questions (76.5%) than lectures. They wanted more topics to be taught this way (96%), as they could apply and re-enforce textbook knowledge, and visualise real-time changes. However, they felt that their experience could have been enhanced with more time and smaller groups. DISCUSSION: HPS is an excellent teaching tool as it stimulates student curiosity and makes knowledge acquisition and understanding easier. It is highly desirable to be incorporated into the teaching of physiology.

PMID : 12188075 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

This information is obtained from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright. Type "NLM copyright" into Google for more information.

Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
G M	Tan	GM
L K	Ti	LK
S	Suresh	S
B S	Ho	BS
T L	Lee	TL

Affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia, National University Hospital, Singapore.

3rd Party provider links

Click the links below to go to related 3rd party information:

MESH categories and related page links

This article was linked to the MESH categories shown on the left below. The links on the right are related Memletics pages.

Links for this article

For links to places where you can get the full text of this article see links. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text.

New! Using similar technology to this site, we have launched find-health-articles.com, targeting over 1 million health research article abstracts.

Here are some articles related to this one (by title keywords):

An intensive hands-on course designed to teach molecular biology techniques to physiology graduate students.

The effects of an exercise physiology program on physical fitness variables, body satisfaction, and physiology knowledge.

Compelling classroom demonstrations that link visual system anatomy, physiology, and behaviour.

A three-dimensional interactive virtual dissection model to simulate transpetrous surgical avenues.

Teaching invasive perinatal procedures: assessment of a high fidelity simulator-based curriculum.

Incorporation of a computerized human patient simulator in critical care training: a preliminary report.

The immediate life support course.

Evaluation of a virtual reality simulator for arthroscopy skills development.

Virtual temporal bone dissection: an interactive surgical simulator.

Validation and learning in the Procedicus KSA virtual reality surgical simulator.

>>> Get more research article abstracts like these, or browse abstracts.

Keywords in this article:

acquisition, action, afterload, anaesthesia, apply, attended, background, based, better, cardiac, cardiovascular, changes, complete, contractility, curiosity, demonstrate, demonstrating, desirable, discussion, divided, easier, effective, effectiveness, enforce, enhanced, excellent, experience, failure, false, felt, fields, first, fl, followed, given, groups, highly, hps, human, hundred, hypovolaemia, improvement, incorporated, investigated, knowledge, laboratory, lacking, learning, lecture, lectures, literature, machine, makes, mannequin, many, marked, medical, methods, meti, monitors, more, occur, patient, physiological, physiology, preload, purpose, questions, raised, real, results, run, sarasota, scenarios, scheduled, scores, sepsis, session, simulator, smaller, stimulates, students, study, supporting, survey, taught, teaching, ten, test, textbook, theatre, time, tool, topics, true, two, type, understanding, visualise, vs, wanted, way, year

Also, see our new free speed reading online course (beta version)