Premium
The Use of High Fidelity Patient Simulations to Improve Critical Thinking Skills in First Year Medical Students
Author(s) -
Harris David M,
Schuster Amanda,
Kay Denise,
Kibble Jonathan D
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.553.22
Subject(s) - feeling , critical thinking , fidelity , medical education , pleasure , curiosity , affect (linguistics) , psychology , leverage (statistics) , computer science , mathematics education , medicine , social psychology , telecommunications , communication , neuroscience , machine learning
Many businesses and universities have stated that current Millennial students are lacking in critical thinking and analytical skill development compared to previous generations. Some attribute this to the ability to “google” information quickly and interact with social networks to make daily decisions. Millennials also comprise most of the medical students enrolled in the US and many instructors have noted that this generation seems to lack critical thinking skills. However, medical educators may be missing an opportunity to leverage the Millennials’ strength of team work. High fidelity patient simulations (HFPS) may provide a place to harness the strength of the team in a controlled learning environment in order to engage students and facilitate critical skill development. However, many factors may play a role in this experience and a “best practices” approach needs to be developed. For example, lack of foundational knowledge could negatively affect their HFPS performance. Likewise, their emotional feelings or engagement in a situation could affect the learning project. The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of baseline knowledge and core effect on the development of critical thinking skills in first year medical students in physiology based HFPS. Methods Students are placed in groups of 6 and participate in 3 HFPS and observe 1. Before each simulation, a pre‐quiz is given to determine a base‐line knowledge for all the teams. After participation in a HFPS activity, students are given a card with feelings based upon activation and pleasure (core effect). Videos of the HFPS will be evaluated by faculty with a validated test instrument based on principles from Insight Assessment and Critical Thinking: What it is and why it counts. Results Faculty scores from the test instrument will be correlated with core affect and baseline pre‐quiz scores for each of the teams. Discussion HFPS may provide a platform to engage first year medical students as well as facilitate development of critical thinking skills. Factors such as lack of basic knowledge or misconceptions, especially of physiology, could affect critical skill development. Discovering factors that play a role in critical skill development through a best practices approach could help HFPS become more effective in teaching and learning the Millennial generation.