Evaluation of a new community-based curriculum in disaster medicine for undergraduates

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, many medical schools include training in disaster medicine in undergraduate studies. This study evaluated the efficacy of a disaster medicine curriculum recently designed for Saudi Arabian medical students. METHODS: Participants were 15 male and 14 female students in their fourth, fifth or sixth year at Jazan University Medical School, Saudi Arabia. The course was held at the Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine and Computer Sciences Applied to the Medical Practice in Novara, Italy. RESULTS: The overall mean score on a test given before the course was 41.0 % and it increased to 67.7 % on the post-test (Wilcoxon test for paired samples: z = 4.71, p < 0.0001). There were no significant differences between the mean scores of males and females, or between students in their fourth, fifth or sixth year of medical school. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that this curriculum is effective for teaching disaster medicine to undergraduate medical students. Adoption of this course would help to increase the human resources available for dealing with disaster situations

Use of high fidelity simulation: a two-year training project experience for third year students in Nursing Course Degree of Reggio Emilia

Nursing students at the end of their studies are supposed to own skills that allow them, in a short time, to act effectively and safely. Therefore, it is of primary importance that during the training period they have the opportunity, under protected conditions, to practice the management of scenarios realistically representative of the clinical setting. High-fidelity simulation workshops, aimed to provide adequate skills in the management of vital criticality, represent innovative and exciting learning tools, thanks to teaching method and forefront technology involved. The laboratory activities included allow the students to completely descend in simulated scenarios either by the use of computerized interactive cases and by computerized manikins. In our study both these types of simulation laboratories were proposed to 3rd year Nursing students attending the academic years 2015/2016 and 2016/2017. The survey administered to both groups at the end of the workshop revealed a highly positive feedback towards this innovative teaching approach that allowed the students to understand the correlation between pseudorealistic simulations and theoretical notions learned during lectures. The experience built through this two-year study allowed us to lay the bases for further studies on this topic