PPAS- Practicing Physical Assessment with Simulators for Medical and Nursing Students

Because medical professionals have to understand their patients’ conditions, students in medical and nursing schools need to practice physical assessments. Since real patients and clinical situations are difficult to produce in school settings, many kinds of simulators have been developed to enable students to practice physical assessments. Simulated patients do not need additional cost but do need a lot of medical knowledge and experience. Moreover, since simulated patients are healthy, they do not display abnormal values when their vital signs are measured. One of purposes in this track is proposing a concept “a healthy person imitating a real patient,” and educational measuring instruments and a simulator based on this concept are demonstrated. This track also presents research into medical simulators and simulation-based learning in Japan and introduces a new learning method combining e-learning with simulation training. Keywords-physical assessment; medical simulator; nursing; medical instrument; vital measuring instrument; auscultation.