Importance of Clinical Skills Laboratories For Medical Students

“The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you create with it is everything.” – Sean Gerety

The innovations in scientific technologies are causing a significant and positive shift in the landscape of medical education worldwide. The aim is to make a massive and significant contribution to the lives of medical students, training and enabling them to stay a step ahead in patient care. With considerable medical institutions installing world-class and cutting-edge medical and clinical laboratories to train and educate their students, medical aspirants can expect great opportunities to come their way. 

The prime objective of the medical curriculum of medical universities is to offer the right knowledge, attitude, and skills to the medical students essential for their practice. They believe in reducing the factual content of the medical curriculum and promoting problem-based and self-dedicated learning and teachings. The new reconstituted medical course improved the unified medical teachings, and focused on imparting clinical skills. The transformations in the teaching and learning methodologies, the profound developments in healthcare, and the swift technological growth challenged the conventional ways of clinical skills development, ultimately giving rise to the emergence of the clinical skills laboratories (CSLs) in several medical and clinical institutions. 

Medical institutions must have advanced and high-standard clinical labs with state-of-the-art equipment to provide top-quality medical education to their students to create future doctors of the highest caliber. The study of medicine is more than just theoretical concepts and classroom teachings, and includes effective, good teaching and learning involving analyzing, handling, and working on the real materials and objects. Classroom learning will be ineffective unless they delve into the process and understand the bond between action and reaction. 

The definition of a good medical university brings together classroom teaching and laboratory experiments for a better and deeper understanding of concepts of medicine. They ensure constructive teaching and learning of medicine that implies a perpetual state of show and tell. When a student performs medical and clinical experiments on their own, they retain the teachings they have learned in the clinical labs for a longer time. 

What is a clinical skills laboratory?

These are educational facilities with potential advantages for undergraduate medical students and the medical faculty. The term ‘clinical skills’ includes a physical examination, observance of a patient’s history, clinical investigations, procedural perfection, diagnostic reasoning, effective communication, professionalism, and teamwork. Such laboratories offer a safe environment with the latest tools and equipment for the students to practice clinical skills before using them on real patients in hospitals. Moreover, they support the procurement, enhancement, and maintenance of clinical skills of medical students. 

Below are the skills that can be taught and learned in these facilities:

• Patient management
• Investigation skills
• Communication skills
• Clinical reasoning
• Health safety and manual handling
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Teaching and learning methodology
• Resuscitation techniques and procedures
• Prescribing skills

Medical universities and schools have gone the extra mile to bring up such educational facilities dedicated to providing clinical skills and knowledge to their students.

The Art of Simulation in Medical Education

Simulation is the act of mimicking the real object, process, or event. The use of simulators in the simulation centers of medical institutions allows students to practice on these human robots without performing experiments on real patients. Simulators have predictable behavior and the experiences are reproducible. They can be programmed to imitate selected findings, complications, or conditions and can be used for training the management for difficult situations. 

1. The importance of simulation to medical education includes:
2. It resolves the problems related to clinical teachings.
3. Development of new technologies for diagnostics/treatment.
4. Efficient solutions for patient safety and medical errors.
5. Assessment of professional competency.
6. Promotes deliberate practice.

Clinical skills laboratories promote self-learning as the medico-legal and ethical concerns get eliminated and the use of manikins averts individual, institutional and cultural hindrances. Students can conveniently practice the human private parts examinations without any embarrassment and can easily approach patients with much confidence. Simulators give direct feedback on the performances using audio-video aids, teachers’ assessments, peer review, and enhancement for further actions for learners. Moreover, they also save time for faculty and students in finding suitable patients for learning and teaching.

Laboratories At Victoria University of Barbados

Victoria University of Barbados School of Medicine is a top medical university offering the best quality MD program to medical aspirants worldwide. To support the classroom teachings provided by the medicine faculty, the university has well-equipped laboratories, including simulation labs, where students learn excellent clinical skills to offer the best patient care in the future. 

The medical institution has four laboratories equipped with the latest tools and instruments where students can practically enhance their medical knowledge and grow as medical professionals.

1. Microanatomy laboratory

It facilitates the study of cells, fluids, tissue, and organs in the human body like organelles and foreign organisms to have in-depth knowledge about the diagnostic procedures and adequate treatment methods.

2. Anatomy laboratory

It is a lab with human bodies and specimens to offer the correct knowledge about the internal structure of the human body, organs, biological processes, and various positions of the body to the students to help them learn the procedure to heal injuries.

3. Simulation laboratory

This laboratory is equipped with 3D animated teaching systems that help in creating an artificial environment and offer hands-on practical training to its medical students. The facility is effective in portraying real-life health challenges and skills development to solve such challenges. 

4. Pathology laboratory

The facility helps to study diseases and injuries and also the art of detailed examination of the body.

5. Physics, chemistry, and biology laboratory

This laboratory enables students to take a practical insight into basic science disciplines. 

How successful are clinical skills laboratories?

Clinical skills laboratories must be designed in such a manner that they should support the intended learning outcome and become an integral part of the entire medical curriculum. The expansion of the clinical skills has to be integrated into the communication skills program and some other parts of the curriculum to prevent reverting to the traditional methods of education. The environment and the clinical bases in medical universities or colleges should imitate the conditions of real practice. 

In the end, clinical skills labs should become a significant part of the education environment for clinical skills acquisition with the latest reformations in medical education. Although clinical skills must be taught in clinical skills labs to provide an ideal environment for assessment, perhaps they should not replace, but rather complement bedside teaching. 

So, study MD  in Barbados at Victoria University of Barbados and become an internationally reputed doctor with the required clinical and medical skills.