Abstract:

The project “Angola Ausculta” has as its main objective to study and implement strategies to capacitate Angolan institutions with the most modern medical simulation technologies based on virtual patients, for the teaching of core competencies in the clinical practice of cardiac and pulmonary auscultation.

The effective screening of cardiovascular diseases through auscultation has a fundamental role in any health system, allowing a cost-effective action on this type of pathologies. However, current teaching strategies for this technique create learning rates in the order of 20%, clearly insufficient for a first level of screening. On the other hand, the emergence of medical simulation technologies, with special emphasis on digital and virtual media, create unique opportunities that make it possible for this training and certification of auscultation skills to be carried out in various environments (local and remote), to different levels of education (under and postgraduate), for a high number of students and with much lower costs than classes with real patients or physical simulators (mannequins).

What if Angolan medical students could train auscultation and be evaluated within a virtual patient hospital accessed by an electronic stethoscope and a tablet? The team from the Faculty of Medicine of the University Mandume Ya Ndemufayo, Angola (FMUMN), in scientific collaboration with the team of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, Portugal (FMUP), intends to boost national research in medical education, specifically tackling the difficulties of teaching cardiac and pulmonary auscultation, and its associated impact on cardiovascular health problems in Angolan society, with Education and Health being two areas of great economic and social relevance.

The work plan of the “Angola Ausculta” project, to be carried out during 2 years, includes four main activities:
1) the investigation of pedagogical strategies adapted to the Angolan reality for teaching auscultation through simulation technologies using virtual patients;
2) the installation, adaptation and testing of new simulation technologies using virtual patients;
3) the design of a pilot for the use of these technologies with students from FMUMN;
4) the execution of the planned pilot, including the analysis of results and strategic conclusions for the national panorama of medical education.

The expected results of the “Angola Ausculta” include the creation of new medicine teaching strategies based on simulation technologies adapted to the Angolan reality, the training of the FMUMN with the most modern medical simulation technologies based on virtual patients , and the successful completion of a first pilot where students will be assessed in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) format with these new technologies. The socio-economic impact of the “Angola Ausculta” project in Angola has a direct component of Education (all new doctors trained per year with high auscultation skills) and an indirect component of Health (the number of patients evaluated per year by these new doctors highly trained).

Keywords:

Medical education, medical simulation, auscultation, training.