Ukraine and Poland will cooperate in the creation of University Hospitals and simulation medicine centers

During the visit to the Republic of Poland, the Ukrainian delegation headed by the Minister of health of Ukraine Viktor Liashko visited the Center for Simulation Medicine of the Lublin medical university (LMU), which has a reputation as exemplary and one of the best not only in Poland, but also in Europe. Members of the delegation, which also included Deputy Health Ministers Iryna Mykychak and Bohdan Borukhovsky, talked with LMU Vice-Rector Professor Camil Torres, who is the head of the Center for Simulation Medicine, about organizing a network of similar innovation centers in Ukraine. 

"The process of creating university clinics and hospitals in Ukraine is irreversible. After all, the functioning of clinics is a development strategy for higher medical education, its future. A university cannot successfully develop and train competitive specialists if it does not have its own clinical base for training. In our vision, the university clinic is primarily a powerful, large and multidisciplinary hospital that creates opportunities for training and research," said Health Minister Viktor Liashko.

Now the LMU Simulation Medicine Center is an ideal platform for future doctors to master practical skills. This training base is equipped as a modern full-fledged hospital, equipped with new models of equipment and medical technics, but, at the same time, patients were replaced by mannequins that are maximally adapted to studying symptoms, performing medical manipulations and surgical interventions. In addition, the center has computer knowledge control and a system for monitoring the implementation of practical tasks that ensure the objectivity of assessing the level of training of applicants for medical education.

The goal of the center is quite educational and training. Future obstetricians, paramedics and medical students hone their practical skills here. There are also various intensive care rooms, operating rooms, wards for the seriously ill, dental offices, where simulators and models are used to help future doctors improve techniques for providing operational medical care of various profiles. 

It is important that wards with simulated patients provide training for future doctors in communication skills with patients and their relatives, as well as how to act and inform the patient in a particular situation.

The Ukrainian and Polish sides agreed on further cooperation in creating multidisciplinary university hospitals and simulation centers at each of the medical universities within the framework of the program for the restoration of Ukraine. 

Since simulation medicine opens up new opportunities and prospects in improving the level of practical training of a doctor, it is used to train future doctors and nurses in basic clinical skills, develop professional competence of certified specialists, and as a method of preventing medical errors to improve patient safety.

During the visit, representatives of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine also visited two university hospitals in Lublin in order to study in detail the experience of building and organizing such institutions for its further application in Ukraine. 

On the basis of these university hospitals, practical training of medical students is carried out, as well as postgraduate training and continuous professional development of certified doctors and nurses. Students and trainees are taught by both teachers of medical universities and highly experienced practitioners.

For Ukraine, studying and adopting the successful European experience in creating university hospitals and modern simulation medicine centers will be one of the key components of the plan to restore the network of Ukrainian medical institutions in the war and post-war periods.