The impact of clinical simulation with debriefing and self-regulation on academic performance in four clinical competencies of medical students

Self-regulation is a fundamental competency that physicians develop in their professional training and preparation for patient care. It is well known that health professionals need to maintain high performance in general competencies. Training with clinical simulation is a teaching tool that helps develop clinical competencies in physicians-in-training; combining this with debriefing and self-regulation techniques can improve learning. Debriefing is a methodology that a teacher can use to assess the thoughts, feelings, knowledge, and mental schemata of a student in a simulated environment and produce a significant change in the learning of the student. This technique can improve the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies in students. The objective of this investigation was to know if the students in a School of Medicine in Mexico could improve their academic performance with the use of simulators when combined with the techniques of debriefing and self-regulation. The obtained results show that clinical simulation with debriefing and explicit self-regulation techniques does improve academic performance in medical students.