TNMU Teachers Completed the “Innovative Approaches to OSCE Organization and Conduction” Course

On March 13-21, 2024, TNMU held courses to improve the professional skills of teachers “Innovative Approaches to OSCE Organization and Conduction. Application of computer technologies at OSCE stations”. The course was organised by Nadiia Pasiaka, a leading specialist of the interdepartmental educational and training centre of TNMU, and Associate Professors Nataliia Haliyash, Nataliia Petrenko and Nataliia Bilkevych.

The course program was designed for 1 ECTS credit (30 hours). For communication and dissemination of information, the course organisers suggested mastering the format of the Padlet page, on which participants could find the schedule and all the information necessary for independent processing. 28 teachers worked diligently to perform their duties more professionally.

The information presented during the courses was based on the achievements of the Erasmus+ project “Simulation Training in Undergraduate Medical Education to Improve the Safety and Quality of Patient Care (SAFEMED+)”, which ensures the sustainability of its results. The aim of the course was to increase teachers’ awareness of the rules of organizing and conducting OSCE, to familiarize with new possibilities of checking students’ competence development using computer technologies, to improve the skills of creating clinical scenarios for OSCE both in an offline format and with virtual simulation of cases.

At the first lesson, Nadiia Pasiaka told the audience about the experience and achievements of TNMU in conducting the Objective Structured Clinical Examination and ways to improve it.

The participants had the opportunity to take part in the OSCE simulation and play roles that were unusual for them: a student, a standardized patient or an examiner. This allows one to identify weak points in the preparation of scenarios and stations for OSCE, demonstrates the need for careful preparation for the exam.

Since the courses were conducted in a hybrid format, the online classes were devoted to discussing the experience of OSCE in the participating countries of the SAFEMED+ project, in particular at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain and two medical universities in Yerevan, Armenia (N. Bilkevych).

Nataliia Haliyash presented the OSCE methodology with virtual simulation of clinical cases as a development of the SAFEMED+ project. The need for implementation of this OSCE format can be explained by the possibility to ensure the organization of a larger number of stations with saving resources, and it is also convenient for effectively testing such a component of the student’s clinical competence as clinical thinking, the ability to prescribe laboratory and instrumental examination and interpret the results obtained, determine patient management tactics.

Nataliia Petrenko spoke about the peculiarity of assessing communicative competence during OSCE and the rules for attracting and preparing standardized patients. Nataliia Haliyash presented the results of the study “Evaluation by medical students of the process of mastering communicative competence”, which substantiates the importance of a comprehensive approach to the formation of this competence.

Course participants had the opportunity to try themselves in the role of students and pass OSCE with virtual simulation of clinical cases, already tested in Moodle. They were also tasked with developing one clinical case for virtual simulation.

Nataliia Bilkevych told the teachers about the possibilities of the Moodle platform, and also presented the CAPSULE (Link https://learn.capsule.ac.uk/cases) and CASUS (https://player.casus.net/) platforms for inspiration. The CASUS platform is provided for use by colleagues at the Medical University of Munich. At present, about 120 cases with virtual patients in Ukrainian and English are available there. The advantage of this platform is that it provides the possibility of structured analysis of cases for clinical thinking development. One can register from your university inbox @tdmu.edu.ua. The platform is available for teachers and students.

In the last session at TNMU Centre for Medical Simulation, the participants of the courses, in addition to presenting their homework, got acquainted with the concept of entrustable professional activity and how it correlates with program learning outcomes, general and professional competences. As there are plans to standardize OSCE at the national level with the introduction of a competence matrix, it is important to understand what we teach and test.

The information was provided by Nataliia HALIYASH.

Photographs by the course organisers.