Dr. Kevin McLaughlin
Topic: Simulation in Medical Education: High Fidelity of High Frivolity?
Date: June 16, 2010
Time: 12:00pm to 1:30pm (Lunch will be served)
Locations:
- Eye Care Centre, 2550 Willow St.
- IRC 305
- CWH 2D22
- MSB 107
- VGH 1912
- KGH 228
- NHSC 9-370
- PGRH 5005
Abstract
Advocates of virtual learning experiences believe that real patients benefit when physicians-in-training hone their skills on actors, simulators, and computer screens before being let loose on the public. Virtual learning experiences not only allow learners to practice, and err, without patients suffering adverse clinical consequences – they also offer more control over the learning experience. When compared to clinical practice, virtual learning experiences allow educators and learners – rather than patient availability – to determine the learning agenda, and there is also the opportunity to create the ‘deliberate practice’ training conditions that are optimal for skill development. But, does training in the virtual environment really benefit patients? If so then learning acquired in the virtual setting must transfer to the clinical setting, so that learners are less likely to err with real patients.
In this presentation I will review the evidence (or lack of evidence) on whether learning on a simulator transfers to real patients. I will cover briefly skill-based and rule-based tasks, before focusing on what I believe to be the greatest challenge – knowledge-based tasks – and will add some new data from our centre on transfer of learning.
Biography
Dr. Kevin McLaughlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Assistant Dean of UME, Clerkship and Research at the University of Calgary. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1989, and completed his training in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the University of Glasgow in 2007. After completing a Fellowship in Transplantation at the University of Western Ontario, he took a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Calgary in 1999. He completed an MSc in Medical Education at the University of Calgary in 2003, which included a thesis on the use of concept sorting to study knowledge structure and its effect on problem solving strategies and diagnostic performance. In 2007, under the supervision of Drs. Henk Schmidt and Remy Rikers, he completed a Ph.D in Medical Education at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where his thesis was on the contribution of analytic information processing to diagnostic performance in medicine. His research interests now include skill acquisition during virtual learning experiences and transfer of these skills to the clinical setting.
Accreditation:
As an organization accredited to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians by the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS), the UBC Division of Continuing Professional Development designates this educational program as meeting the accreditation criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada for up to 1.5 Mainpro-M1 credits (per session). This program has been reviewed and approved by UBC Division of Continuing Professional Development. Each physician should claim only those credits he/she actually spent in the activity.
Accreditation Statement:
The CHES Research Rounds is a self-approved group learning activity (Section 1) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification program of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.