gms | German Medical Science

Objective: Nowadays medical skills laboratories are common at medical universities. Practicing clinical skills on training and simulation models are usually part of the curriculum. Because clinical skills require repeated practical training to become routine, people need those facilities to be able to practice before conduction a skills on humans.

This study describes the evaluation of selected training models within the student’s practical training course “professional development and skills” during the bachelor programme “health sciences” at the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences (KL).

Study design: Students in the third semester voluntarily answered a questionnaire regarding their experience in clinical skills after they completed the 12 lessons, mandatory training course.

For each skill, students without previous practical experience in the particular skill and students who already performed the skill either on models or in humans were compared.

Results: All students improved their subjective experience due to the course. The most important factor in learning clinical skills was the lecturer. No differences between the two groups could be detected regarding the importance of each model for learning the respectively skill.

Conclusion: Using training models in medical education is an efficient teaching concept to improve practical skills. However, one must consider that the benefit of a model highly depends on the accompanying teacher and on the skill itself.