| This poster was co-authored by Douglas Blevins, MD, the Clinical Director of TheraSim, Inc, Timothy Brewer, MD, the Director of the International Society for Infectious Diseases and David Hadden, TheraSim's Founder and CEO. The premise of the paper is that clinical instructor-led training with printed material cannot deliver the volume and scale of training required to deal with the HIV pandemic. In addition, evidence of learner behavior is difficult to assess, verify and quantify, and current web-based programs suffer from a lack of interactivity.
The method utilized in the study was based on a web-based EMR-model simulation instrument using six virtual HIV patient cases. The program uses guidelines from and provides links to DHHS, IDSA, CDC, WHO as well as package inserts, drug interaction databases, published articles and conference abstracts. Experienced clinicians oversee development. Warnings and advice are offered during the simulation, and a breakdown of these warnings with scores plus several paragraphs of remarks is provided at the end. The data pool consisted of 42 days of user data from 1,410 sessions by 744 clinicians (56 countries).
Mr. Hadden commented, "This system allows us to asses clinical behavior in a much more accurate and realistic manner. Most computer based activities rely on reading, some video and then taking a multiple-choice test. Doctors go to work to treat patients, not read and take test so if you really want to assess their clinical practice skills, you need a method that simulates medical practice more accurately and does not restrict their clinical choices."
Dr. Blevins was reach for comment after defending the poster, "The results are very interesting. Our study showed that dosage errors were relatively low, around 10% but resistance errors were high, 27%, that were a clinician prescribes a drugs that the patient is resistant to. An astonishing 30% of all participating clinicians failed to initiate PCP prophylaxis when indicated, while 30%; did not start or continue ART when indicated by guidelines". These data further underscore the need for clinical training systems that can provide a more realistic and measurable clinical training environment." It is worth noting that the system received very high user satisfaction rating of 97% and a completion rate of 66% - as compared to the industry average of 30%.
This study showed that widespread global assessment of clinical skills can be accurately and rapidly assessed using simulation-based clinical training tools. The data from these systems will provide a more accurate picture of global clinical quality and practitioner strengths and weaknesses.
The team plans further studies in the future that will determine the impact of simulation-based instruments for both measuring and improving clinical skills.
About TheraSim®, Inc.
TheraSim, Inc. is dedicated to improving patient lives through better support of healthcare professionals with state of the art software tools and services. TheraSim reduces the variability in the delivery of medical treatment and enables healthcare professionals to more rapidly assimilate new medical information and make more effective clinical decisions. |
