Introduction There is still a need for competent breast lump detection palpation skills, especially in developing countries. Our goal is to design, develop, and establish a test to determine whether students can, by touch alone, identify and discriminate between a range of different simulated lesions at different adiposity levels. Methods Common lesions, breast cancers, and cysts were physically simulated and hidden in a test object referred to as the "tactile landscape" (TL). Ribs, intercostal muscle, and nodularity - normal anatomical features - increased their realistic complexity. Varying depths of features simulated varying degrees of adiposity. A testing protocol was created to determine the testee's ability to identify and discriminate different commonly occurring breast masses using palpation. Five experts (four breast surgeons and one general practitioner) and 20 inexperienced medical students were recruited and tested. Results were compared. Results The TL has been based on previously verified breast models and has softness similar to 53% of women's breasts and nodularity similar to 60% as assessed in a breast clinic by breast surgeons. The five experts indicated that the simulated lesions felt like those they might encounter in clinical practice and all of them identified the lesions and nonlesions hidden in the TL 100% correctly, thus indicating the value of the model. In contrast, only one student was able to identify all the lesions. One student identified none of them. The remaining students mean score was 65%. Conclusions All students but one performed poorly in comparison to the experts. This indicates that the test could be useful to test students' ability to identify and discriminate breast masses. If successful, it will add previously missing capability to the mix of assessment instruments already used, thus potentially improving clinical breast examination training and assessment.

Clinical Breast Examination (CBE) is the examination of a women's breasts by a healthcare professional, such as a breast surgeon, family physician or breast-care nurse who is trained to recognise many different types of abnormalities and warning signs in the breast [1]. CBE is particularly important in rural areas and developing countries who have limited access to technology such as mammography. CBE needs to be taught to health professionals like any other clinical skill used by medical professionals in the workplace. CBE in part involves palpation of the breast, that is, determining by touch which breast lumps are normal and which are suspicious in feeling. The gold standard for assessing tactile skills in CBE is seeing whether students can accurately identify and discriminate between different breast lumps also known as masses (IDBM) on actual patients in a clinical setting. However, this is not practical in a medical education setting. Usually the testing methods 'go through the motions' of feeling the breast as part of CBE. So the students' technique is examined either using unrealistic simulation models or using an intimate examination associate (IEA), an actor/volunteer who permits students to examine their intimate body parts such as breast or genitals for teaching purposes. These volunteers do not have any abnormalities so this teaching does not include the actual detection of suspicious lumps.We undertook a study of clinical skill with 10 medical students to examine different methods of assessing novice student clinical skills after a brief training in CBE. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of current training and assessment of novice students in CBE and their capacity to identify and discriminate breast masses (IDBM) on actual patients. METHODS: We assessed each student's IDBM ability in an actual clinical situation, a breast clinic with a mixture of eight IEAs and one real patient with a large, easily palpable, putative breast cancer. We recruited 10 clinically inexperienced medical students, who were trained for 30 minutes by two breast surgeons using an IEA. Students were tested in a simulated clinical setting, a breast clinic where each examined 4 IEAs and one patient. The students were blind to who was the real patient and who was an IEA. Patients were examined by a breast surgeon in private prior to the commencement in the study. The breast surgeon recorded any clinical finding on the patients during the initial examination. The surgeon coached each patient on how to mark the students and showed the patient their results so the patients had a benchmark. After each examination was finished the students had four different assessments: 1) patients marked each student, 2) students were independently proctored - that is, marked by an expert, 3) students recorded their clinical findings and 4) students recorded how confident they were that they had the correct findings. Results from different kinds of student assessments were compared. RESULTS: A chi-square test for independence between true positive or negative masses versus student-assessed positive or negative masses was not significant at alpha = .05. This means that there was no statistical association in the indication of positive or negative presence of masses versus whether such masses were actually present or absent. By comparison, experts (breast surgeons) were able to detect normal and abnormal breast masses by palpation alone 100% of the time and rate their confidence level as 'certain'. Unlike the experts, student self-reported confidence was unrelated to their competence score (CS). Proctoring was inversely related to the students' CS. CONCLUSIONS: The main conclusion is that novice students do not seem to be able to accurately detect breast masses in a clinical setting even after training. On the basis of these results, we believe that a comprehension component in the current CBE testing is needed in addition to the current methods of testing.

Our objective was to design, develop and validate better clinical breast examination (CBE) models addressing the deficiencies of previous models. Detailed research and a methodological design approach led to the development of a new technique for creating lifelike models for teaching CBE. Six multi-layered breast models representing a range of normal human variation for durity (hardness/softness), nodularity (fibro-glandular tissue) and adiposity (fatty tissue) were developed and validated. Various construction materials, MRI scans, traditional casting and three-dimensional (3D) printing were used to build models with lifelike look and feel (biofidelic). The models realistic in anthropometry (size and shape), feel (durity and nodularity) and appearance (skin feel and colouring) – visual biofidelity enhances perception of feel – incorporate anatomically correct layering of ribs, soft adipose tissue, nodularity and additional signs of breast disease, both benign and pathological. These were validated by four breast surgeons who compared their feel alongside a sample of breast patients (N = 78). Models were rated as ‘undecided’, ‘similar’ or ‘very similar’ to 81% of patients for nodularity and 82% for durity. These are the first models to incorporate normal human variability and be validated with real patients. These novel biofidelic models provide a standardized way of teaching health professionals normal from abnormal.