Clinical reasoning is a complex set of abilities that healthcare professionals must learn and rehearse and being unable to adequately exercise this skill is one of the primary causes of cognitive and diagnostic errors in patient care. However, established medical and healthcare education lacks a structured standardized method of teaching, learning and assessing clinical reasoning. Implementing a clinical reasoning curriculum could help reduce diagnostic errors and costs, which are two vital points set forth in the official EU Health Policy. Therefore, the aim of this project is to fill this gap and conceptualize, develop, evaluate and disseminate a clinical reasoning curriculum in healthcare education for students, and a train-the-trainer course for educators on how to teach clinical reasoning.
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COSIMA is a group of researchers that are funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The project aims to explore the diagnostic competence of students (school and university) in simulation-based environments. CASUS provides the platform for these studies and further developed video handling.
The CASUS learning system is continuously being developed in close cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences in Heilbronn, the University of Heidelberg and the University of Münster.
In a joint effort, new features and technical and didactic improvements are continually being implemented. CASUS is widely used as a virtual patient database in various e-learning projects in medicine.
The WAVES project combines the skill sets of both academic and enterprise partners, to make scenario-based learning (SBL) more accessible for a wide range of professions. SBL techniques are widely recognized as a key tool in education, which provide training in competency and decision-making. More information about this EC funded Erasmus+ project can be found at www.waves-project.eu
Famulus is a BMBF funded project, which explores ways to optimize the facilitation of diagnostic competence. Studies in both medical and pedagogical contexts are implemented in CASUS, and the results are used to guide further development.
The interdisciplinary “Master of Medical Education" is an instrument to improve the quality of instruction, the qualification of training trainers and multipliers as well as managers, especially in medical schools and in promotion of a nationwide exchange. Instruct supports this Master’s degree program by creating and maintaining their website.
Instruct is a partner in the EU-funded Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Fellowships, which aim to improve clinical reasoning training through e-learning and virtual patients. In the course of this project, a concept mapping tool was developed and implemented into CASUS. More information can be accessed on www.virtualpatients.net
VetVIP is an e-learning project in veterinary medicine funded by the EU. Didactically designed CASUS virtual patients provide students access to the most recent research results. The project is a starting point in veterinary medicine to create and share a common pool of knowledge as a central learning platform for students in various countries (Poland, Hungary, Germany).
The Center for International Health (CIH) fosters health promotion in developing countries by strengthening education and research in the healthcare sector. To reach this aim, the CIH focuses on educating and training physicians, educators and researchers. Instruct is a partner in this project and aims to establish an e-learning portal, which provides digital material that can be combined with face-to-face teaching.
More information can be accessed at https://www.cih.lmu.de
The EC-funded project Virtualpatient-Work.Net aims to foster a global network for web-based training in occupational medicine. The project was initialized by the Institute for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich in order to advance the creation and exchange of virtual patients. CASUS provides the platform for the virtual patient database and Instruct, as a project partner, is responsible for the technical infrastructure as well as individual developments for all project partners.
