Nowadays, the classic system of providing clinical medical education is not fully capable of solving all problems arising in the process of high quality doctor training. The most challenging and difficult to overcome is the situation of practical inability to demonstrate all variety of clinical situations, complicated by a number of moral, ethical and legal concerns arising between patients and trainees in the process of care giving. Among the ways to overcome these challenges, simulation method defined as educational modelling by implementing diagnostic and therapeutic tasks, problem-based tasks, and job-oriented role-play, seems to be quite promising in educating and training medical students. One of key figures of simulation-based education is ‘standardized patient’, an individual specially trained to simulate a disease or condition so vividly that even experienced doctors would hardly recognize the simulation. Working with ‘standardized patient’ enables students to develop and assess the skills of taking history, respecting deontological ethics, developing clinical thinking, communication skills. In our present conditions the ‘standardized patient’ methodology can be combined with other interactive forms of learning. Sufficient mastery of the material enables students to simulate clinical manifestations of a known disease both in its typical clinical course and in its variants and acting as a ‘standardized patient’. The paper highlights some aspects of role-playing giving an example of the theme “Acute appendicitis in children”. This role-play simulates the situation when parents are seeking a surgeon for a sick child, and begins with an interview, identification of complaints and history taking. In the next stage, when examining the ‘standardized patient’, the ‘doctor’ demonstrates his/her capability and skills to carry out physical examination, percussion, palpation, etc. In the third stage, the ‘surgeon’ formulates preliminary diagnosis, confirms or excludes acute abdominal pathology, makes up the list of additional instrumental and laboratory investigations. The students discuss the dialogues between the ‘surgeon’, ‘child’, and ‘parents’, evaluate the procedure of examination, analyze, comment, correct, when necessary. The teaching doctor sums up the results of the role-play, assesses and comments the work of the ‘doctor’, ‘child’, ‘parent’, and all the students who participated in the discussion. The role-play method implemented in this format allows students to simulate some professional activities close to possible real life situations, to conduct differential diagnosis in a rational way in the shortest possible time, to analyze types of the disease and consequences of right and wrong actions and decisions.
interactive learning method, ‘standardized patient’, profession-oriented role-play, paediartic surgery
«Bulletin of problems biology and medicine» Issue 3 (157), 2020 year, 181-183 pages, index UDK 378.147:616-094
