Can we teach core clinical obstetrics and gynaecology skills using low fidelity simulation in an interprofessional setting?

Abstract

Core clinical skills acquisition is an essential component of undergraduate medical and midwifery education. Although interprofessional education is an increasingly common format for learning efficient teamwork in clinical medicine, its value in undergraduate education is less clear. We present a collaborative effort from the medical and midwifery schools of Monash University, Melbourne, towards the development of an educational package centred around a core skills-based workshop using low fidelity simulation models in an interprofessional setting. Detailed feedback on the package was positive with respect to the relevance of the teaching content, whether the topic was well taught by task trainers and simulation models used, pitch of level of teaching and perception of confidence gained in performing the skill on a real patient after attending the workshop. Overall, interprofessional core skills training using low fidelity simulation models introduced at an undergraduate level in medicine and midwifery had a good acceptance.

Introduction of an interprofessional gynaecology surgical skills workshop for undergraduate medical and nursing students

“…Student perceptions of the GSW workshop program were positive, with statistically significant improvements in self‐reported post‐workshop confidence in all procedural skills. These findings concur with similar studies exploring dedicated simulation‐based procedural skills programs . Currently, it is expected that students are adequately exposed to gynaecology surgical skills through skill demonstrations, clinic and theatre attendance, and also by practising on real patients in hospital .…”

“…Procedural skills taught in a simulated, best‐practice model have been found to be more effective than the traditional ‘see one, do one, teach one’ approach on hospital wards . The busy healthcare setting greatly challenges the latter approach; time constraints and lack of available supervisors limit students’ opportunities to practise procedures on placements .…”

Introduction of an undergraduate interprofessional simulation based skills training program in obstetrics and gynaecology in India

“…This experience is mostly acquired from placements on birth units and clinics where students learn about performing obstetric examination and births. Similar standards are also expected for midwifery students, where they are encouraged to be directly involved in the care of pregnant women [1] during placements. When these students eventually become doctors or midwives, they are generally expected to perform internal examinations for women independently.…”

“…In the present study, we introduced a program called Women’s’ Health Interprofessional Learning by Simulation (WHIPLS) in the Indian setting. This program has already been shown to be beneficial in a high-resource setting [1, 9, 12] and is well integrated into both medical and midwifery curriculum in an Australian university [12]. This study explores the feasibility of introducing WHIPLS in a low-resource setting.…”

Obstetric and Midwifery Education: Context and Trends

“…While there seems to be shared and even occasionally blurred boundaries of roles between obstetrics and midwifery (where both midwives and doctors may be providing routine care individually and together as a team), the majority of the medical and midwifery education occurs in silos. Opportunities for combined education for both professions have been introduced but are often limited to clinicians in practice rather than learners at undergraduate level (Kumar et al 2014(Kumar et al , 2017(Kumar et al , 2018a. To address this, educational interventions introduced in an interprofessional setting are often tailored to manage complex obstetric emergency situations (which are rare but may occur unannounced even in women with low-risk pregnancies).…”