[Collaborative clinical simulation to train medical students]

In health sciences and medicine, collaborative learning has an important role in the development of competences to solve clinical situations. Adequate cooperation, coordination and communication skills have a direct effect on patient safety. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and Clinical Simulation (CS), separately, are effective and efficient educational methods to develop competences in undergraduate medical students. To our knowledge, educational models that combine both teaching methods, including a personalized attention of the student, educational infrastructure, materials, teaching techniques and assessment competencies, have not been proposed previously. This article describes the application of a combined model of CSCL and CS for teaching clinical competences to medical students. Since 2015, the collaborative clinical simulation model is part of the training agenda of the Universidad de Talca Medical School in Chile. During 2016 and 2017 it was also applied on students of the Universidad de Barcelona Faculty of Medicine in Spain. According to the experience acquired, implementation of this method is feasible with commonly used resources, although its real efficacy remains to be evaluated.