The Effectiveness of Interactive Clinical Case Study Simulation in Palliative Medicine

The medical students’ interest in case studies used as an instructional strategy in modern medical education and in teaching tools like virtual patients and simulations is growing. Professional skills and knowledge about palliative care are widely accepted to be deficient and the medical care in palliative care settings remains inadequate. Reduced student-patient contact times in hospitals, mainly in palliative care settings with progressive chronic disease patients and increasing cost of technology means generated the need to create innovative methods that help students develop their clinical skills. Palliative medicine interactive clinical case study simulation (ICCSS) offers a cost-effective method to measure the impact of this virtual instructional tool on the students’ clinical skills. It helped us to measure and compare their choices made in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up process prior and after an educational module in palliative medicine. By simulating the most common patient profiles for palliative medicine, the interactive clinical case study simulation (ICCSS) allowed us to record the students’ diagnostic and treatment decisions, to show the likely outcome of each decision, and to provide individualized feedback to identify and correct inappropriate decisions.

The interactive clinical case study simulation (ICCSS) can be successfully integrated with face-to-face teaching in palliative medicine like a supportive and innovative educational method.