Heading the simulation field at UNITEC and UVM, institutions from the Laureate Group, in Mexico, is Professor Jessy Escobar who received us and shared her thoughts on the use of Body Interact Virtual Patients.
Integration of Virtual Patients at UNITEC and UVM
In both institutions, UNITEC and UVM, Body Interact is a learning resource implemented across the curriculum, of different courses.
The stepping stone to using Body Interact in these universities was the pandemic, with all of the known constraints it brought to clinical teaching and learning. And so, Body Interact, became the high-end learning tool for clinical and professional training of students in those times, for the clinical education subjects that were in stand by due to the impossibility of having presential classes.
The process of selecting scenarios
The faculty performed a curated work of comparing the learning goals of the scenarios available in Body Interact with the learning goals of the different subjects in order to have a good and coherent match across the curriculum.
Training sessions for the faculty
The training of the professors for the Laureate Group included elements across the 30 campus from UVM and 9 from UNITEC.
Body Interact provided a multi-campus approach, allowing to manage licenses across the different universities and faculties of the Group.
Implementing across the different curricula
Body Interact implementation has been disseminated in the Laureate Group in different areas: nursing, medicine, physiotherapy and dentistry.
Use in the clinical skills labs
The Virtual Patient Simulator is used in two phases – one first stage regards the more technical aspects of the simulator, followed by the clinical teaching and learning, summarized not only by the feedback provided by the simulator but also by a pedagogical debriefing by the tutor with the class.
In the words of Profesor Jessy Escobar, Body Interact is a versatile tool, as it can fit the needs encountered in clinical teaching-learning contexts.
Students Evaluation
Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a very relevant way to evaluate students in a standardized manner, but it is also challenging when facing a great number of students. Presential OSCEs are quite logistically demanding.
The faculty at the Laureate Group in Mexico found Body Interact an amazing alternative for large-group OSCEs, and the feedback from the students was really good.
Interesting in Professor Jessy Escobar’s words is that students found Body Interact use for OSCEs not only as an assessment tool but also as a way to learn.
UNITEC and UVM have been implementing OSCEs with Body Interact for around one and a half years and the outcomes provided the possibility to improve both programs as well as practical classes.
OSCEs with Body Interact at the Laureate Group in Mexico is, by now, a very well-oiled machine – from what is being assessed, to who has which part in the process.
The success of Body Interact in UNITEC and UVM has dictated that Body Interact is and will be a permanent teaching, learning and assessment tool for the students.
By Daniela Abreu – Body Interact’s Instructional Designer
