Virtual Clinical Skills

Teaching clinical skills online is very challenging. How can we teach a set of hands-on skills remotely?

Using the lessons learned from the Virtual Resus Room, here is the Virtual Clin Skills Room! Like the VRR, it uses a shared Google Slide set where learners can click and drag images of hands or stethoscope to “examine” a patient.

The goal of the Virtual Clin Skills Room is two fold:

  1. Make the process of doing clin skills online more interactive, and therefore more interesting, for our medical students.
  2. Allow better mental rehearsal of the physical exam maneuvers by pairing a verbal description with an action (ex: moving hands while saying they are palpating).

Acute Abdomen Session

This session was developed for our 2nd year medical students. Using a series of patients who have presented to the ED, med students are expected to work through their history, general inspection, and focused physical exam.

Example of a medical student completing their physical exam of the abdomen.
Note: This video has no audio (to protect the privacy of the learner), but as the learner clicks and drags the pictures to complete the physical exam – they are describing their actions and what they are looking for (ex: “I am auscultating in all four quadrants – what are the bowel sounds?”)
1. Demo Virtual Clin Skills Room (Google Slide Set)

You can check out the virtual room and experiment with how it works using this demo. This includes videos of instructions for students and facilitators.

Virtual Clin Skills Room: Demo
2. Virtual Clinical Skills Acute Abdomen Room (Google Slide Set)
Virtual Clinical Skills Room: Acute Abdomen

Note: These slides are shared as view-only files since they are the masters. To use them – simply copy the slideset into your own, new Google Doc. Then you can modify and interact with it.

3. Facilitator Instructions and Case Details
Acute Abdomen Case Details for facilitators

This pdf includes instructions about how to use the virtual room and the details about the corresponding cases. Facilitators can review these instructions and case details ahead of time, so they are prepared to guide their students through the cases by answering their questions on history and physical.

  • Cases written by: Dr. Mirek Otremba, Dr. Sarah Foohey
  • Virtual Room slide set Developed by: Dr. Sarah Foohey

%d bloggers like this: