A hearty dose of simulation - sharing best practice and resources across different disciplines in medicine and medical sciences

In recent years, many teaching technicians have had to diversify their skills set and work in different departments or disciplines. From recent experience working both in classes for BSc students in medical sciences and now in clinical skills, it is clear that students from across these different disciplines all cover many of the same practical aspects of a subject, but from different approaches. It is also clear that many of these disciplines may operate autonomously and do not necessarily share all of the practical and staffing resources they might have access to.
One of the areas where this is evident is in cardiovascular teaching. Physiology students use PowerLab/LabTutor data capture resources extensively with peers or external volunteers, whilst subjects like medicine tend to rely more on simulation with volunteer ‘patients’ or simulation mannequins. Since the merger of medical science and medicine at our institution, the opportunities for sharing staff skills/experience, resources and equipment have increased. We have tried to integrate styles of teaching between these different disciplines to improve teamwork and the training experiences for students of all backgrounds.
Current examples include the introduction of high fidelity human patient simulation into medical sciences. The recent installation of a dedicated CAE iStan Adult Simulator solely for medical sciences teaching has allowed the provision of a greater range of research projects for BSc students and is allowing science academic staff to diversify the range of assessments and teaching styles that they use with the students in both medicine and science. This also provides support and backup to the clinical simulation staff who now have a wider pool of staff who are experienced in high-fidelity simulation and who can author new materials. Science staff have also adopted multi-station, skills-based practical examinations that are commonly used in clinical training.
Conversely, the science staff are now introducing use of Powerlab data capture technology to clinical staff to help them improve their research capacity and help clinical students understand physiological measurement more effectively. Sharing of synthetic physiological samples from science classes has also allowed medicine to improve their use of moulage during clinical teaching.
Our experience is that the basic biomedical and clinical disciplines can benefit from greater collaboration in terms of sharing experience and resource in practical teaching. Such initiatives are being led by the teaching technical staff in our institution and have allowed all disciplines involved to expand their repertoire of educational activities.