Medical practice represents a highly specific professional activity. It requires a very distinct set of skills and, most important, the ability to bring them together. In real practice, the clinical professionals execute a complex cognitive algorithm in order to synthesize a wide range of data and to provide a minimal risk/maximal efficiency solution for every particular case. In order to achieve a good training of medical students towards this goal, the teaching and learning processes require a different approach - significantly more complex than the traditional information feeding. The CLEVER project aims are the following: (i) To transfer know-how and best practices from the institutions which have already gone through a successful implementation of authentic, motivating, competency-based learning styles into the medical curriculum. (ii) To compile guidelines/guidance (methodological and didactical rules) on the proper use of virtual patient cases and case-based learning sessions aiming at developing clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills with respect to the national standards and cultures as well as internationally accepted evidence based clinical guidelines. (iii) To investigate and implement an IT platform for authoring, reviewing and playing virtual patient cases. (iv) To enrich existing curricula at the partner institutions with sets of new virtual patient cases authored by well-trained young medical teachers. (v) To evaluate students’ and teachers’ attitudes to the innovative education methods as well as the changes in their learning and teaching habits with the use of data gathered and analyzed along the whole period of the project. (vi) To link with the existing regional educational networks – ROEDUNET and MEFANET - and other groups or similar projects at the European level and use the wide audience of teachers and students to disseminate the project outcomes including the virtual patient cases authored in various European languages. (vii) To develop the skills in digital competence. (viii) To increase the competence in foreign language. Based on a long-standing collaboration, in-depth knowledge of each other’s work, aspirations, and common interests in research and education, the partnership of this project comprises three institutions from three European countries: “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iasi (Romania), Masaryk University (Czech Republic) and Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice (Slovakia). The CLEVER project will produce the following four intellectual outputs: (i) compiled methodologies and guidelines on preparation, training and implementation of the proposed approach to clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills, (ii) implemented ICT platforms for virtual patient cases to be used in case-based learning sessions, (iii) authored and reviewed virtual patient cases with their translations to three European languages, (iv) analyzed datasets gathered with the goal to evaluate teaching and learning styles as well as attitudes of students and educators to the specific parts of curricula before and after implementation of CLEVER’s methods and tools. CLEVER addresses the fundamental goal of safe clinical training. This purpose will be achieved by exercising not the real patients than VPCs within an ICT platform developed for CBL management. The VPCs will be designed and produced based on a set of anticipated guidelines and training ICT tools delivered to the educators who will become the authors of virtual patient cases and, at the same time, will act as the leaders able to conduct case-based learning sessions. The project will strongly promote the open-source software designed to address complex educational challenges. The ICT platform will be selected as a result of careful needs analysis. Substantial efforts will be spent on linking the content of the ICT platform to European educational networks (such as MEFANET and ROEDUNET). The dissemination will also include workshops and interactive sessions organized with four international conferences, linking the CLEVER project with wide academic communities: MEFANET 2019 in Brno, Medical Informatics Conference 2020 in Iasi and International Student Medical Conference ISMCK 2020 and ISMCK 2021 in Kosice. CLEVER will bring fundamental benefits to both students and teachers. For students, it will create an interactive, innovative, highly motivating learning environment. The teachers will be provided with best practices and expertise, which together with the ICT platform will allow them to exploit their clinical experience effectively in the pedagogical part of their career. At the institutional level, the ICT platforms will stimulate the development of partnerships and collaboration between trainers (educators), trainees (students) and employers (academics and clinicians.
The CLEVER project played a significant role in UMFIASI's strategy to modernize learning methods using the latest ICT technologies, which included three distinct directions: (i) Formalizing the curriculum using an ICT platform dedicated to the analysis and management of the curriculum based on "learning units" and "learning outcomes"; (ii) Creating and managing VPCs using an ICT platform appropriate to this purpose through the CLEVER project; (iii) Testing and evaluation of the new teaching methods "Team-based learning" and "Problem-based learning". Thus, the virtual patients' cases (VPCs) created within CLEVER and the results of the other two projects have been perfectly integrated within the "Prof. univ. Cristian Dragomir" Simulation Center was inaugurated in December 2020. CLEVER's premises were among the best because (i) UMFIASI has been using an e-learning platform since 2010 that allowed the automatic assessment of students' knowledge through MCQ questions, (ii) MU had an excellent knowledge of VPC development techniques, and UPJS had gained significant experience in operating technology platforms for VPCs. The UMFIASI strategy started from the well-known fact that medical practice is a very specific professional activity as it requires not only knowledge but also a very distinct set of skills that are used all the time synchronously and took into account the transition from real patients to intensive training of the skills in two-complementary ways: (i) by using modern learning methods that develop critical thinking and collaboration; (ii) by using both medical simulation techniques, either low-fidelity simulation on VPCs and on "virtual scenarios" or the high fidelity simulation using modern medical simulators. The objectives of the CLEVER project were not fully achieved due to the COVID-19 pandemic and had a major impact on the multiplication events as we had to give up all three workshops provided in the project. For this reason, we have not been able to fully assess the attitudes of students and teachers towards innovative methods of education and to connect existing regional educational networks - ROEDUNET and MEFANET, including virtual cases of patients written in different European languages. But a significant increase in intellectual output (11 VPCs more than the 24 VPCs required in the project) offset this failure. As a result, we had enough time to refine the VPCs development technique and create more cases in surgery and gastroenterology. As such, during the implementation of the project, we managed to: (i) transfer know-how and best practices within the partnership in the context of the national standards and cultures, as well as those accepted internationally as evidence-based clinical guidelines (ii) develop guidelines and protocols for the correct use of VPCs to develop clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills. (iii) investigate and implement an ITC platform to create, review, and manage VPCs. (iv) to enrich the existing curriculum at partner institutions with sets of new VPCs, created by well-trained young medical teachers. (vii) to develop skills in digital competence. (viii) to increase proficiency in a foreign language. The CLEVER project produced the following three intellectual results (the application evaluator disapproved the proposed fourth IO): (i) compiled methodologies and guidelines for the preparation, training and implementation of the proposed approach for clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills; (ii) implemented ICT platforms for virtual patients' cases to be used in case-based learning sessions, (iii) created and reviewed virtual patient cases with their translations into three European languages; The project used open-source software designed to meet complex educational challenges following a careful needs analysis. CLEVER has benefited both students and teachers because it has created an interactive, innovative, and highly motivating learning environment for students. The teachers received best practices and expertise, which, together with the ITC platform, allowed them to exploit their clinical skills experience in a modern, ICT-based way. Furthermore, at the institutional level, the implemented ITC platform has and will continue to play a beneficial role in stimulating the development of partnerships and collaborations between trainers (educators), trainees (students), and the employer. At the institutional level, the implemented ITC platform has and will continue to play a beneficial role in stimulating the development of partnerships and collaborations between trainers (educators), trainees (students) and employers (academics and clinicians).