e-CREST Project: ‘An evaluation of an online patient simulation training tool (e-CREST) to improve the clinical decision-making skills of medical students’

September 2019

The University of Nicosia Medical School is pleased to announce its participation in the project ‘An evaluation of an online patient simulation training tool (e-CREST) to improve the clinical decision-making skills of medical students’ designed and implemented at University College London, UK, since the academic year 2017-2018. The study was also implemented in final year medical students at the following medical schools: Barts School of Medicine, Queen Mary University, London, UK (2017-2018), University of East Anglia Medical School, Norwich, UK (2017-2018) and Koc University School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey (2016-2018).

The project will be implemented at the University of Nicosia Medical School during the academic year 2019-2020. eCREST is an online educational tool designed to help improve medical students’ clinical reasoning skills. This tool uses virtual patients to simulate a doctor-patient consultation in a GP setting.

This study is aiming to see whether online simulation is an effective way of teaching medical students clinical reasoning skills. The researchers involved in this study are: UCL: Dr Angelos Kassianos (Co-Principal Investigator in the UK/ Senior Research Fellow at UCL, Department of Applied Health Research), Dr Jessica Sheringham (Co – Principal Investigator in the UK/  Senior Research Fellow at UCL, Department of Applied Health Research). University of Nicosia Medical School: Prof Alexia Papageorgiou (Local Coordinator/ Chair of the Centre for Medical Education), Dr Constantina Constantinou (Director of Research), Dr Ourania Kolokotroni (Chair of the Department of Primary Care and Population Health), Dr Persoulla Nicolaou (MD Programme Director) and Dr Adonis Ioannides (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs).