Dr. Manuel Gómez Fleitas, University of Cantabria (Spain)

Please briefly describe who you are and your institution.

I am Dr. Manuel Gómez Fleitas, a Professor of Surgery, in charge of Clinical Surgery at the University of Cantabria, Spain.

What problem were you attempting to solve with the introduction of STATdx?

The teaching approach that we have is that the student is trained to have good clinical judgment using anamnesis, physical examination, and complementary tests. Medical imaging is a fundamental part of the diagnostic evaluation of clinical situations.

What are the greatest benefits you have experienced since introducing STATdx?

STATdx provides a very comprehensive number of images, very well categorized by pathologies and very well related to clinical and cognitive aspects of the different diseases. The images are of magnificent quality with excellent comments on them and the help of arrows and other resources to highlight the importance of said images. This reinforces student learning.

If you could share any insights with your fellow healthcare professionals as to how STATdx is helping you in your current day-to-day experiences, what would they be?

Without a doubt, training in self-management is one of the main virtues of STATdx. We could observe that in our experience with our students. They were able to design diverse clinical situations, and discuss the different diagnostic and therapeutic options. It also helps to encourage teamwork, with all the materials supporting the learning for the rest of the class. In addition, it is undoubtedly a very useful tool for the preparation of seminars and to help students in their process of acquiring self-learning and continuing training skills.

Due to COVID-19, confinement has forced education departments to train entirely online. Do you think that tools such as STATdx could support alternative training – mixed face-to-face and online - effectively?

The characteristics of this tool have been very useful to maintain a good teaching level in this last year, which has been especially anomalous, and we have had to improvise intense and almost unique non-face-to-face teaching methods. The very positive experience of STATdx in these circumstances guarantees that it can be very effective for the online teaching of our subject.