Research Project Description:

The use of simulation in assessments of clinical competence, such as Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), provides an opportunity for more realistic assessment of the candidate’s clinical skills while examining real clinical features. The project proposed in this proposal involves the development of a stethoscope device that plays pre-selected (ab)normal auscultation sounds automatically and only when the device is in direct contact with the patient’s body, for use in assessment of clinical competence. The proposed device can offer advanced and realistic assessment of student skills and knowledge on interpretation of pre-recorded normal and/or abnormal auscultation sounds (heart, lung, gut) using simulated patients, which would otherwise require use of real patients. When the device is in contact with the body, the patient’s own physiological heart/lung sounds will be masked and replaced with the pre-loaded auscultation sounds, allowing realistic clinical examination and diagnosis during the OSCE. The custom-made device will source off-the-shelf components and will address some drawbacks of current state-of-the-art at a fraction of the cost. Testing of the device will take place in the lab and in “real” examination conditions, with subsequent assessment of student, examiner and simulated actor opinions on the usefulness, practicality and realism offered by the device. It will provide a versatile tool that could be used initially for assessment purposes, but that could also be introduced as a teaching aid in the future. This is made possible as the proposed device provides a novel solution to realistic cardiac, pulmonary and gut auscultation for an unlimited number of disorders through examination on any individual, thus eliminating the need for use of real patients for each disorder, including rare disorders for which it may be particularly difficult to find real patients.

Principal Investigator(s) and Coordinating Institution(s):

  • Dr Nicoletta Nicolaou, University of Nicosia Medical School, Cyprus

Researchers at University of Nicosia Medical School:

  • Dr Nicoletta Nicolaou
  • Dr Panayiota Demosthenous (Research Assistant)

Research Project Acronym: SimuSCOPE

Funding Institution: University of Nicosia Medical School

Funding Programme: 2021 Call of the University of Nicosia Medical School Research Seed Fund

Research Project Status: Ongoing

Start and End Dates: November 2021 – October 2022