Introduction
pain, infection, labor, increases learning retention, CDG
DILATION, INFECTION, DILATION
Practical skills training among undergraduate students is challenging, considering suitable learning and respectful care to women during delivery. Among the delivery practices, cervical dilation assessment through vaginal examination, in which progress of labor is verified, is important in clinical decision-making; an incorrect diagnosis can cause physical and emotional harms to parturients In a traditional obstetric environment, the students need to perform several vaginal examinations in order to develop proprioceptive skills to assess cervical dilation. Generally, these exams are performed under the supervision of an experienced professional, who then repeats it with each woman. This repetition is a sensitive action, as women generally consider this procedure as invasive and often relate it to feelings of shame, constraint, fear or discomfort. In addition to that, it can increase the infection risk However, being capable of performing a correct assessment of cervical dilation via a digital examination is recognized as an essential skill in the management of delivery pain In this way, the clinical practice with real parturients to train the students in the development of digital examination skills becomes dichotomous: on the one hand, the invasive technique of vaginal examination should be minimized and, on the other hand, the objective should be that apprentices with few opportunities have sufficient competence in cervical dilation assessment. The challenge is set out and it is necessary to search for solutions.A number of studies evidence that training in simulators increases learning retention and minimizes the gap between knowledge about a procedure and its practical application The students acquire the skill to perform a vaginal examination by means of a proprioceptive experience. However, they have difficulty assessing cervical dilation through the distance between the fingertips. They probably need something else than proprioceptive perception to improve their simulation learning results In order to assist the undergraduate Obstetric students in assessing cervical dilation in the laboratory, a tool called Cervical Dilation Guide (CDG) was created. The hypothesis is that using direct visual comparison increases accuracy of the results in the cervical dilation assessment.Thus, the objective of this study was to verify the correct assessment rate when using direct visual comparison in the cervical dilation measures in hard-consistency cervix simulation models.