The Clinical Skills Lab (CSL) was founded in January 2007 with support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
The Lab promotes learning, training and assessment of clinical skills (and other skills) in a protected environment, in a controlled and safe manner for the patient, and thereby contributes to clinical excellence.
In pursuing its objectives, the CSL has three distinctive aspects: a wide portfolio of mannequins for training clinical gestures, a solid standardized patients program and an advanced simulation group, using high-fidelity simulators.
The Lab is a dynamic structure, with many varied activities, distributed in four major areas. At the undergraduate level, the CSL participates in the training of basic life support (certified), technical learning of the physical examination and clinical interview, clinical gestures and complementary techniques and training of communication skills, both in the context of classes (from 1st to 6th year of the medical grade) and in after-school practice sessions, courses and workshops. In the medical degree, the CSL also participates in assessing the acquisition of clinical skills, in particular supporting the organization of objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) focused on doctor-patient communication, clinical history taking and physical examination, held at the end of the 3rd and 6th year. At the graduate level, the CSL contributes to the continuous medical education of physicians, promoting international training courses (some included in the internship program) and advanced training as well as a training program in communication skills.
Finally, the CSL also develops research activities, with particular focus on communication training and assessment of clinical skills.