Inside peek: Test-driving clinical skills before rotations

The rising third-year student, tongue between his teeth, slowly drove his needle into a silicone pad meant to mimic human skin, then pulled his thread tight and started in again.     Steady hands and keen focus meant clean stitches at the suturing table, one of seven skills stations at the clinical skills workshop. Theodore Zaki sealed up the gash with a classic horizontal mattress suture, not unlike the stitches in a baseball, then straightened up and took a satisfied breath. “You want to do anything you can to avoid looking like an idiot on the first day,” said Zaki, a medical student at Yale School of Medicine, who is just two days from the start of his surgical rotation. “When the doctor hands me a needle and asks me to suture something up, I’ll definitely be prepared.” Learning from mistakes and successes It was that motivation to get ready that brought hundreds of students to a workshop on clinical skills during the 2016 AMA Annual Meeting. There they found a safe setting to make their mistakes and learn what they will need to know when they first treat patients. With guidance from experienced specialists, they tried their hands at not only suturing but airway management, radiology, hematology, orthopedics, prediabetes screening and blood pressure care. Clinicians urged students to dive in with and sample every specialty they could. The workshops mean more comfort and confidence for stude...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news