Standardized patient in small group teaching: facilitating the small group

Resumo

Small group teaching is used frequently in medical education to provide an opportunity for performance based instruction in problem-solving, communication, and team work. Principles used to help medical students learn to assess and manage their patients may be integrated into small groups for formative education. This article describes an application of a successful model of human simulation based interaction (standardized patients) to a clinical development program in a problem-based learning environment. Evidence of institutions using this methodology will be included in the discussion assessing the scope and practical application. Description of both faculty facilitator and learner roles in small group experiential learning settings with standardized patients will be provided, as well as a brief discussion of assessment techniques using both formative and summative feedback. This method uses scenarios derived from real case examples that are structured to provide common challenges. It uses trained standardized patients to portray patients and to give live and immediate feedback to learners. Live learner simulations give participants a true experiential learning opportunity in a classroom without risk of harming real patients. A realistic practice scenario allows learners to practice and receive valuable feedback from other learners, faculty and standardized patients. This article will describe one application of this method in medical education to teach students patient-centered communication.

Keywords: Active learning; Curriculum, Problem-based; Experiential learning; Patient simulation; Education, Medical, Undergraduate.

Revista HUPE, Rio de Janeiro, 2014;13(4):57-61

doi: 10.12957/rhupe.2014.13955