In this article you will learn how the MENARINI laboratory managed to innovate in the field of medical education, allowing hundreds of surgeons to access quality training for the surgical treatment of prostate and renal cancer.
Image: Hands-on course in laparoscopic radical prostatectomy. AUCA Congress, Costa Rica 2022
We interviewed Priscila Valle, Product Manager of the Urological and Antianemic Line of the MENARINI Group Central America and Caribbean. Priscila tells us what it was like to work with Urotrainer to replace traditional webinars with practical and realistic training.
Priscila shares with us her vision of the courses, her objectives as a company and what was the feedback from the health professionals who participated.
How to offer a differential to surgeons?
5 key aspects that every company should take into account
1. When to start working with remote simulation?
I would like to develop a little context. Our company, MENARINI, is known for investing in continuing medical education, to provide training to surgeons on an ongoing basis. During and post pandemic, many of the educational activities were affected, as it was impossible to gather physicians and working material in the same place to carry out the activity.
When we learned that Urotrainer allowed the surgeon to train from home, it seemed like the perfect solution to several inconveniences we were facing in continuing with the courses.
We conducted a pilot test where we gave scholarships to 4 participants and after that, seeing how successful it had been, we decided to conduct our own course.
This was developed virtually and 15 urologists from all over the Central American region were awarded scholarships, each of them participating remotely from their own countries in their own clinics.
2) How was the experience of the surgeons who trained hands-on?
I was delighted to see the satisfaction of the surgeons who participated in the course. We saw that the practical training was very important and that it was an instance that was missing to be able to provide physicians with this type of training.
In addition, as an advantage, we noticed that the courses were very personalized, where the professionals had the support of the lecturers, as opposed to what happens in webinars or other types of courses.
When we went for more and decided to hold our own event, we reaffirmed that the customer service provided by Urotrainer is very good. They take the utmost care of each student's learning experience.
The whole team is committed, giving a very punctual follow up, being permanently aware of all the requirements we ask for.
For all these reasons, today we trust Urotrainer to continue working together. As a company we are always looking for partners that work with good synergy and this was an objective that we had not been able to achieve before with other suppliers. When we met with Urotrainer we were able to agree on ideas, the doctors were very satisfied and the product they offered us was able to be at the forefront, which was one of our objectives with this course.
I was impressed that they always have an extra room to assist the doctors with any problems that may arise during the course. Another reason, which made us trust Urotrainer and such an innovative product, was to find the publications made in urology scientific journals worldwide, as well as to see them present in the most important congresses of the specialty and that doctors recognize and value the brand.
3) Why it is important for companies to invest in continuing medical education?
At MENARINI we are very committed to education. When we met Urotrainer, we were developing several medical education projects, but so far they were very traditional, i.e., lectures, discussion tables, webinars and although we had done hands-on courses, these were with the use of cadavers.
In Guatemala (resident country of the MENARINI Laboratory) there is no management of cadavers for study, so it is necessary to resort to other countries. During the pandemic and the following year, it became impossible to gather and transfer urologists from different countries, let alone cadavers to perform the practice. For this reason we were forced to cancel this type of course, leaving us with a void in the education sector to replace this hands-on need.
When we met Urotrainer we loved it because it solved our 2 drawbacks, both if the participants could not travel because of health restrictions due to the pandemic, as well as being able to do hands-on practical courses. We found the model to be very realistic and the teachers were very good. MENARINI is very committed to continuing medical education and Urotrainer is innovative and fits our needs perfectly.
Urotrainer has a kidney and a prostate simulation model. Both allow to train with high realism the step by step of a partial nephrectomy or a radical prostatectomy respectively.
4) How to add value and offer something superior to theoretical training and/or webinars?
One of the main motivations for developing these initiatives is to differentiate ourselves from our competition. It was interesting for us to start conducting practical courses for our urologists and to move away from the traditional lectures and webinars that we had been doing. We began to notice that physicians were no longer interested in participating in these types of activities, since they were not designed to allow them to interact with the lecturers or other participants, nor to apply the knowledge they had learned.
Another thing we loved about the courses is that in the region there is a great need to develop laparoscopy in urology, and this can only be learned in a practical way.
Being different from other companies, providing surgeons with this educational support, leads us to maintain our reputation as a scientific, ethical and cutting-edge laboratory.
In the region, MENARINI has been characterized by continuing medical education, doctors have us well positioned since we are present in all courses and congresses. This has positioned us among surgeons as a scientific company. We even have a special department, called MENARINI Scientific Area, which is in charge of verifying that all participations are done in an orderly manner. That is the main reason why we do it, not to sell more products, but because of how we position ourselves as a company in the eyes of surgeons.
The Urotrainer courses allow every surgeon interested in learning the surgical treatment of renal or prostate cancer to learn the technique and acquire the necessary manual skills. All this in an orderly, progressive and without risking the lives of patients or animals.
5) Forge a long-term relationship that impacts physicians and patients.
MENARINI has a portfolio of products of various specialties, in urology we were not so strong, we had only one product. We began to launch new articles and we saw the need to make ourselves visible to urological surgeons, beating our competition, which we achieved by participating in the Urotrainer courses. We achieved that MENARINI can be top of mind, not only in our strong points, but also in new specialties such as urology.
We want to make it something recurrent, it is what interests us the most. Now that everything is getting back to normal, we are very attracted to the idea of conducting face-to-face courses.
In addition, also propose projects to be able to implement this type of courses in other areas of medicine, being able to attract the attention of other specialists.
At the end of the day, working together with laboratories such as MENARINI and projects such as Urotrainer means that physicians receive better training. Consequently, it also improves the quality of patient care, safety and reduces potential errors.
As Urotrainer's slogan says: "Training is caring".
Would you like your company to be top of mind for surgeons in the region?
Learn how you can organize a hands-on course to provide a superior experience to the urologists who use your products. Write to us: simulation@urotrainer.com
