Case Study

Virtual clinical experiences for Myanmar medical students

The problem

Myanmar medical students have a wide gap in their clinical exposure

Severe disruptions have plagued Myanmar’s undergraduate and postgraduate medical education – firstly with the Covid-19 pandemic and later with a military coup d’état in February 2021. In the wake of the current humanitarian and political crisis, many medical students partaking in civil disobedience have been driven underground for fear of retribution, foregoing bedside teaching and crucial clinical learning opportunities in hospitals

This pilot was sponsored by the Health Security, Innovation and System Reform Foundation.

Solution

The VCE™ platform was used for the pilot rollout of remote-synchronous simulation

We partnered with the University of Nottingham and five universities in Myanmar to run the pilot, which used our platform to create virtual clinical experiences for medical students.

Scenarios related to Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Paediatrics and each two hour session had an introductory, consultation and debrief phase

Students experienced a live stream of the consultation with the patient-actor through the clinician’s smart glasses, interacting in real-time with the clinician, the patient and their fellow students.

Impact

With the collaboration of diaspora clinicians and actor-patients, the VCE™ platform enabled simulated clinical experience participation for 400 medical students at five universities in Myanmar

76.3% of student respondents to a post-pilot survey rated the session to be ‘helpful’ or ‘extremely helpful’
68.4% rated the session to be representative of a real clinical experience
Synchronous remote learning through virtual clinical experiences can be used to address the dearth of clinical opportunities afforded to medical students in Myanmar

Next steps

The Myanmar team are building a new medical school and will be using VCE as part of its delivery for clinical skills and assessment.