Programme Clinical Skills Year 3

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The Skillslab provides training sessions for medical students to learn the skills they need when working with patients. Approximately half of the training sessions concern physical examination skills, such as taking blood pressure or examining a knee, the other half are procedural (therapeutic) and laboratory skills, such as urinalysis.

Skillslab training sessions are organised for each block and are related to the block theme. The students register themselves for the training sessions or are allocated to a particular training. Each training session accommodates a group of ten students and is supervised by a skills teacher/doctor or sometimes (depending on the skill) an anatomy teacher or clinical expert.

The training sessions each last 1.5 hours, during which the students learn a particular skill. Each session starts with a short introduction after which the skill is demonstrated and/or the students practise the skill in pairs: one student examines the other. The teacher checks whether the skill is performed correctly and gives the students feedback.

Some skills are practised on models and manikins if the real situation cannot be simulated (resuscitation, for instance) or if practising on each other is undesirable for other reasons (gynaecological examination, for example).

The Skillslab has implemented programmatic assessment. Skills assessment consists of frequent feedback on the students’ skills and monitoring individual progress. At the end of the bachelor’s programme, the students take a skills test in which they are expected to show that their skills levels are sufficient to be admitted to the master’s programme.