Developing the 'NUS Tummy Dummy', a low-cost simulator to teach medical students to perform the abdominal examination.

摘要

Simulators may be used to provide adequate exposure to learning experiences that allow clinical skills to develop, that is, allow medical students and trainees to perform the steps of clinical examinations and to acquire diagnostic skills. To date, simulators have been developed for trainees to perform cardiac and respiratory examinations, deliver a baby and perform surgical and endoscopic procedures. Interestingly, simulator use to perform the abdominal examination has not been described in the literature. This paper describes the creation of the National University of Singapore (NUS) Tummy Dummy (NUS-TD), a low-cost, portable abdominal simulator, which can be used to teach the steps of the abdominal examination. During the recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza, contact between medical students and live patients was restricted. Our medical school adopted contingency measures to impart clinical skills, such as the use of simulated patients and e-learning modules. In addition, a teaching module using the NUS-TD was piloted, to impart clinical skills to a group of 44 medical students during their clinical skills foundation course. Feedback was positive with 93.2% opining that the NUS-TD was useful and 79.6% saying that it increased their confidence in performing the steps of the abdominal examination. Abdominal simulators can be adopted to impart palpation skills to medical students, in addition to using live patients with good clinical signs.