Integration of virtual patients into modernizing activities of medical education across MEFANET

摘要

Utilization of traditional teaching methods in education of medicine was considered as the most convenient way to introduce clinical problems and topics during long history. Thanks to the modern technologies and advances in multimedia, simulations and on-line availability obtained during last decades, this barrier was successfully overcome also in this area of higher education. Therefore, our activities are aimed to bring teachers new possibilities to make education of medicine more attractive and more illustrative at all medical faculties involved in MEFANET network. This should be achieved by integration of virtual cases into pre-clinical preparation of students. The virtual cases presented in the form of virtual patients will stimulate and improve both the self-learning activities and the critical thinking of students and future physicians. To discover the needs and expectations of our teachers in the area of virtual patients an online survey was conducted. Based on the requirements derived from this survey the most suitable platform was selected to be implemented into the activities to support multimedia and electronic forms of education at medical faculties.