THE PARTICIPATION by clinicians at Cork University Hospital in two pioneering EU-funded assessment projects will help medical staff develop and maintain their skills, according to a key participant involved in the projects.
Prof George Shorten of the Department of Anaesthesia at Cork University Hospital said both the MEDcap and the Ortho-on-Line projects had huge potential for supporting the training of doctors and allowing their competence be assessed in a simulated environment.
Prof Shorten said the MEDcap project, which is funded by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme, involves a research team looking at the performance of one procedure, spinal anaesthesia, to examine the area of competence.
The research team comprises members from Cork University Hospital, UCC, the Interaction Design Centre in the University of Limerick as well as the University of Graz in Austria and the University of Pecs in Hungary and the Australian medical devices company, Medic Vision.
The MEDcap project involves developing assessment methods to define the various skills involved in spinal anaesthesia.