The use of role-play as a model of teaching palliative care to interns in general medical practice

Abstract

Contemporary medical higher education, especially the postgraduate training of physicians, requires a creative teaching approach to train a competent health care professional. The use of interactive role-play teaching method assists in strengthening the link between practical and theoretical skills, which is especially relevant in teaching of palliative medicine. The paper is aimed at evaluation of the possibility of improving the effectiveness of the training of medical interns, using the role-play technique. To evaluate the impact of such interactive teaching methods as role- play in teaching of palliative care, we analyzed the effectiveness of teaching of 162 interns from 2014 to 2020. Subgroup I (n=82) involved medical interns who had in-class experience with role play technique. Subgroup II (n=80) involved interns for whom role-play teaching approach was not utilized. The findings of the analysis have revealed that the use of role-play teaching model in Subgroup I increased the academic success rate of interns to 94.7% (p≤0.05) in contrast to 81.3% (p≤0.2) in Subgroup II. Moreover, interns of Subgroup I rated the work of the teacher higher (8.2 points), compared to Subgroup II, where the score was 6.9 points. Therefore, the use of role-play as one of the interactive teaching methods in the postgraduate training of interns can improve the basic knowledge in patient care management in both theoretical and practical part of the training, which further improves professional progress and necessitates greater use of this method of interactive training in the postgraduate study.