USE OF SIMULATION PROGRAMS AS TEACHING AND RESEARCH TOOLS IN HEALTH SCIENCES

The re cent technological development offers a wide variety of Simulation Programs (SP) in the field of Health Sciences, of easy and free access that includes vast is sues in health sciences, the optimization time of practice sessions, the capture of attention, the increase of creativity, self learning, and students' active participation. However, these advantages are only possible when professors have a deep knowledge of the the me to be simulated. The performance of these tools have been evaluated in the last 12 years by 4,250 students of the School of Medicine, at the Department of Physiological Sciences of the University of Carabobo, by means of a 5 points Likert scale (0 the worst to 5 excellent) resulting 4.78 +/- 0.34 (X +/- SD). These results confirm the great value of SP in Higher Education.