Evaluation of a simulator for teaching clinicians abdominal palpation in the kampo style / 医学教育

ABSTRACT

In kampo medicine, an illness is considered to affect the entire body, even if the symptoms appear only in the abdomen. Abdominal palpation is considered an important diagnostic physical examination in kampo medicine. Because learning the kampo style of abdominal palpation is difficult, we attempted to simplify the process by developing typical models of 6 important kampo abdominal diagnoses (shinka-hiko, kyokyo-kuman, fukuchokukin-renkyu, shofuku-fujin, shofuku-koman, and shinkabu-shinsuion).1) When we discussed abdominal palpation in lectures on kampo medicine for clinicians we also assessed the opinions and impressions of participants about the abdominal palpation simulators. 2) We administered an anonymous questionnaire survey about interest in kampo medicine, the understanding of abdominal palpation in the kampo style, and an evaluation of the abdominal palpation simulators. We obtained 149 replies from participants of the 11 lectures. 3) Of the participating physicians, 85.2% were interested in kampo medicine. However, 23.5% of physicians were not familiar with abdominal palpation in the kampo style. 4) Furthermore, 58.4% of physicians thought that kampo-style abdominal palpation was explained well or very well in the lecture with the abdominal palpation simulators. The abdominal palpation simulators were judged to be useful or very useful by 72.2% of the physicians. 5) In conclusion, the abdominal palpation simulators were considered to be useful for learning abdominal palpation in the kampo style, even though these simulators have some shortcomings. These models may be useful for simplifying the learning of abdominal palpation by students of kampo medicine.