Introduction of Clinical, Simulation-Based Software for Medical Sciences Teachings

Introduction - Simulation is the gold standard for training in aviation and trauma medicine. Now it is available for diseases diagnosis and treatment. With simulation, clinicians can practice their art in a realistic, consequence free environment, combining both theory and practice in a comprehensive program. Method and materials - In the virtual clinical environment of “VPsoft mentor” software, the practitioner reviews a patient's history, orders laboratory tests and procedures, interprets findings, renders diagnoses, and prescribes medication. Every diagnostic or treatment decision the clinician makes for the patient is analyzed by E-mentor, providing instant feedback.Results - This software have been used in our academic centre in Arak, as part of residency evidence based learning in a schedule of the small group teaching which, by comparing two groups of case and control, we detected meaningful differences in the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) evaluation scores between them.Discussion / Conclusion – Expert systems-based virtual patient simulation shows promise as a mechanism for assessing practitioner skill, detecting skill gaps and for electronic mentoring. Using CD- based clinical simulations it is possible to augment clinical sciences training globally at low cost with high clinician acceptance, kin order to track improvement over time.