During the visit to the Republic of Poland, the Ukrainian delegation led by the Minister of Health of Ukraine Viktor Lyashko visited the Center for Simulation Medicine of the Lublin Medical University (LMU), which has a reputation as exemplary and one of the best not only in Poland but also in Europe. The delegation members, including Deputy Ministers of Health Iryna Mykychak and Bohdan Borukhovsky, spoke with LMU Vice-Rector Professor Camille Torres, head of the Center for Simulation Medicine, to organize a network of similar innovation centers in Ukraine.

"The process of creating university clinics and hospitals in Ukraine is irreversible. After all, the functioning of clinics is a development strategy for higher medical education and its future. A university cannot successfully develop and train competitive specialists if it does not have its own clinical training base. In our view, the university clinic is first and foremost a powerful, large and multidisciplinary hospital that creates opportunities for training and research," said Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko.

Today, the LMU Simulation Medicine Center is an ideal platform for future doctors to learn practical skills. This training base is equipped as a modern, full-fledged hospital, equipped with new models of equipment and medical equipment, but patients have been replaced by mannequins that are best suited to the study of symptoms, medical manipulations, and surgical interventions. In addition, the center has a computer control of knowledge and a system for monitoring the implementation of practical tasks that ensure the objectivity of assessing the level of training in medical education.

The purpose of the center is entirely educational. Here, future obstetricians, paramedics, and medical students hone their practical skills. There are also various intensive care units, operating rooms, wards for the seriously ill, and dental offices, which use simulators and models to help future doctors improve techniques for providing emergency medical care in various fields.

Simulated patient rooms must provide future physicians with the skills to communicate with patients and their relatives and how to act and inform the patient in a given situation.

The Ukrainian and Polish sides agreed on further cooperation in establishing multidisciplinary university hospitals and simulation centers at each of the medical universities within the framework of the program for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

As simulation medicine opens up new opportunities and perspectives in improving the practical training of physicians, it is used to train future doctors and nurses in basic clinical skills, develop the professional competence of graduates, and prevent medical errors to improve patient safety.

During the visit, representatives of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine also visited two university hospitals in Lublin to study in detail the experience of construction and organization of similar institutions with a view to its further application in Ukraine.

Based on these university hospitals, practical training of medical students is carried out, as well as postgraduate training and continuous professional development of certified doctors and nurses. Students and students are taught by both medical university professors and highly experienced practitioners.

For Ukraine, the study and adoption of successful European experience in establishing university hospitals and modern simulation medicine centers will be one of the key components of the plan to restore the network of Ukrainian medical institutions in the war and postwar periods.