British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2003, Vol. 91, No. 3 309-311
© 2003 The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anaesthesia
The problem of coordinating simulator-based instruction with experience in the real workplace
1 Scottish Simulator Centre, Stirling, UK 2 Department of Anaesthesia, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Victoria Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4LP, UK
*Corresponding author. E-mail: david.greaves@ncl.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A recent trend in medical education has been to replace practical instruction using real patients with a variety of simulations, ranging from communications skills stations, where trained actors play the patient, through the ‘part-task trainers’ familiar in undergraduate clinical skills centres, to intermediate and high-fidelity whole-patient simulators. Another trend has been away from classical curriculum towards the use of learning objectives, defined as ‘competencies’. A clinical competence is a chunk of learning that will change the learner’s behaviour and that, observed as part of the learner’s performance, can be judged satisfactory or otherwise by the teacher. At postgraduate level, implementing the recommendations of the report Hospital Doctors: Training for the Future1 required a change in assessment philosophy towards the definition and recognition of competencies. The Royal College of Anaesthetists2 responded by introducing its competency-based scheme for training and assessment.
These two trends have come together where the need to demonstrate