"What brings you here Mrs Maria?": Pilot experience of simulated patients in an ESMAE-ESS partnership

Abstract

Simulating different aspects of clinical practice is a tool available for pre-graduate training of healthcare professionals. It presents levels of complexity ranging from training skills in class, to consultation with simulated and standardized patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of physiotherapy students about the performance of theater students as simulated patients in a pilot experience involving a collaboration between ESMAE-P. PORTO and ESS-P. PORTO. Seventy-nine students of the first degree in Physiotherapy evaluated the performance of 7 actors in the simulation of 7 clinical cases. The assessment was carried out through an online questionnaire, consisting of 8 questions in a Likert scale with four levels, ranging from 1-completely disagree to 4-completely agree. The average values of the degree of agreement of each question were used for analysis.

Physiotherapy students considered that the actors: represented in a credible/credible way (mean 3.4±0.88); that the information they gave was consistent with the health condition they were simulating (3.6±0.87); who gave the information accurately, and it is apparent the domain of the same (3.1±76); who gave information that had not been requested (2,2±0,84); who seemed insecure/hesitant (1.7±0.81); that the nonverbal language of the actors was consistent (3.1±0.77); who used terms and expressions consistent with the characters they were representing (3.4±0.64) and who; they were representing (2,2±0.91). The confidence interval was 95%. Physiotherapy students consider the performance of the actors positive in all aspects identified as relevant by the actors.