International Journal of Healthcare Simulation

Background:

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare professionals have needed to rapidly adapt to changing demands. For some, this has involved adapting a ‘task-sharing’ approach which means that professionals undertake tasks that are not usually considered part of their job role, for example, Junior doctors giving medications and many were ‘redeployed’ completely to areas of greater need. In the same vein, the role of the medical student was expanded and explored and some medical students were given the opportunity to undertake paid work as healthcare support workers (HCSWs). It can be argued that the education and training of medical students are heavily focussed on a medical model of healthcare and often lacks depth insight into the caring aspects of patient care.

Aim:

The aim of the study was to create an interactive practical care skills simulation training aimed at medical students.

Method/design:

We designed a practical simulation training programme based around the ‘fundamentals of care’ as defined by the nursing and midwifery council ^[1]. It was delivered over a half day (3 hours) and involved explanation, discussion and practice of basic care skills that would be needed, including clinical observations, nutrition and hydration, bowel and bladder care, personal care (including some basic moving and handling) and last offices. This was based around a patient care scenario, with students required to interact with the manikin and each other as they would in practice, allowing them to practice interpersonal skills as well as the practical aspects of care.

Implementation outline:

Early versions of this course were used as part of a comprehensive induction programme that included testimony from HCSWs working within the site hospital, who were able to share real-life experiences and offer peer support. This helped influence the development of this course to shape it into an innovative multi-disciplinary training. The training course was developed reactively to meet the developing need of students to prepare for redeployment by April of 2020 and since then has grown and developed into the half-day simulation training that is outlined above. It has now been incorporated into the in-hospital clinical skills curriculum for third-year medical students passing through the trust on the understanding that, this course has helped medical students to better understand the role of other professionals and will enable closer multi-disciplinary working in future. Anecdotally, it is obvious from interacting with students that there is a need to incorporate training in basic care into the medical curriculum to prepare students for task-sharing in the future as well as to better understand the caring professions and improve multi-disciplinary working. However, there is not enough post-course data to establish a true effect from this course at present. We continue to run this training course as part of the year 3 undergraduate clinical skills programme and aim to collect more survey data to evaluate and adapt it.