Conference Recording final

In a teaching session for medical students, the speaker describes an activity where students simulate impairments of vision, hearing, and dexterity. They engage in a role play of history taking, experiencing the difficulties that patients with these impairments may face. The purpose is to help students understand and empathize with these challenges. After the activity, students reflect on their experiences and discuss ways to overcome limitations. Students enjoy the simulation, which lasts around 5 minutes. The session ends with small groups sharing their experiences with the whole class and discussing potential changes for future practice. What I'd like to do at this stage is to describe the teaching session we deliver to our medical students in year 1, moving into mild hearing loss. Working in groups of 3 or 4, we invite students to put on an impairment of vision, hearing or dexterity before completing a task that is familiar to them, which is a role play of history taking, such that the patient has difficulty seeing the script provided, the doctor has difficulty hearing the patient's account and the scribe has difficulty writing it down. We use safety glasses thinly smeared with Vaseline to simulate impaired vision, cotton wool plus or minus Vaseline to simulate impaired hearing and writing with the non-dominant hand to simulate impaired dexterity. The intention is to enable students to engage in a familiar activity with effort required to compensate for their impairment. Following the practice, we pause to encourage personal reflection and sharing experiences within these small groups to focus on initial thoughts and feelings, how to help each other overcome limitations, taking off the impairment and how to apply learning to future patient encounters. Students engage well and enjoy the simulation, which lasts around 5 minutes. The teacher closes the session by inviting small groups to share their experiences with the whole class, identifying common themes and considering changes to future practice. I'm going to pass around a summary of themes that arise on student comment. How did that go?