Published online Jan 19, 2024. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v14.i1.111
Peer-review started: August 31, 2023
First decision: October 24, 2023
Revised: October 30, 2023
Accepted: December 22, 2023
Article in press: December 22, 2023
Published online: January 19, 2024
Processing time: 140 Days and 16.7 Hours
Global education in psychiatry is heavily influenced by knowledge from Western, high-income countries, which obscures local voices and expertise.
To adapt a human simulation model to psychiatric education in a context that is specific to local languages and cultures.
We conducted an observational study consisting of six human simulation sessions with standardized patients from two host countries, speaking their native languages, and following an adaptation of the co-constructive patient simulation (CCPS) model. As local faculty became increasingly familiar with the CCPS approach, they took on the role of facilitators—in their country’s native language.
Fifty-three learners participated: 19 child and adolescent psychiatry trainees and 3 faculty members in Türkiye (as a group that met online during 3 consecutive months); and 24 trainees and 7 faculty in Israel (divided into 3 groups, in parallel in-person sessions during a single training day). Each of the six cases reflected local realities and clinical challenges, and was associated with specific learning goals identified by each case-writing trainee.
Human simulation has not been fully incorporated into psychiatric education: The creation of immersive clinical experiences and the strengthening of reflective practice are two areas ripe for development. Our adaptations of CCPS can also strengthen local and regional networks and psychiatric communities of practice. Finally, the model can help question and press against hegemonies in psychiatric training that overshadow local expertise.
Core Tip: The co-constructive patient simulation (CCPS) model harnesses human simulation as a novel way of psychiatric education and training that is immersive, experiential, and uniquely tailored to (and by) its intended learners. For a globally under-resourced field like psychiatry, developing and strengthening vibrant communities of practice can have enduring and long-lasting returns, including in workforce recruitment and retention. The adaptations of CCPS that we describe, through their train-the-trainer components, have the potential to sustain and even replicate themselves; they can become vehicles of local capacity building.