Doha: Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) has launched a new programme for medical professionals to develop innovative practical examinations for assessing the skills of resident physicians.
The course, delivered by WCMC-Q’s Division of Continuing Professional Development and other WCMC-Q faculty and staff, provides participants with the skills to design a programme of simulated clinical examinations with standardised patients — trained actors who play the role of patients.
Titled ‘Certificate Programme in the Development of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) With Standardised Patients’, the first instalment of the new course consisted of five half-days of training held at WCMC-Q throughout April, May and June. Twelve faculty members from Hamad Medical Corporation’s Internal Medicine Department and WCMC-Q participated.
Dr Dora Stadler, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Dean for Continuing Professional Development at WCMC-Q, and Deema Al Sheikhly, Director of Continuing Professional Development, directed the course.
Al Sheikhly said: “Objective Structured Clinical Examinations that utilise standardized patients are extremely effective both as learning and assessment tools because they replicate real-life consultations between doctors and patients extremely accurately. This helps trainees learn to treat their patients with professionalism and compassion, while their supervisors can observe to ensure that they are able to communicate effectively with the patient and can conduct a thorough and complete medical examination.”
Participants learned key skills to develop OSCE programmes, such as how to set clear programme objectives, write cases, devise appropriate checklists and scoring systems, give effective feedback to learners after assessments and train standardised patients.
The final learning session was held in WCMC-Q’s state-of-the-art Clinical Skills Center, which has six examination rooms equipped with audiovisual monitoring systems that allow faculty to discreetly assess learners as they perform simulated consultations with standardised patients.
The final session challenged the participants to put the theories they had learned into practice by running their own Objective Structured Clinical Examination using the cases they had developed during the course. The course concluded with a group discussion and reflection led by Dr Stadler and Al Sheikhly.
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