MedEdPORTAL (Jul 2015)
Denise: A Virtual Patient
Abstract
Abstract Introduction The virtual patient (VP) program “Denise” was designed to present a clinical scenario that may not be encountered during a short psychiatry clinical rotation in medical school or an advanced nurse or physician assistant program. This interactive VP scenario allows the trainee to elicit history from the VP presenting for an initial psychiatric evaluation by asking questions to cover a psychiatric interview and mental status exam. As undergraduate medical training is increasingly distributed at distant sites and campuses, the VP offers the opportunity for deliberate, standardized psychiatric interview practice with immediate feedback to the learner anywhere, anytime. Methods Our team from the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior and the University of Florida's Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering created the web-based VP. Students interact with the VP Denise using a web-browser-based VP system, Virtual People Factory (VPF), developed at coauthor Lok's research lab. The scenario was tested and enhanced prior to submission. Results Student satisfaction with the Denise VP was measured with a nine item survey on a 5-point Likert scale, items being labeled as Poor, Fair, Average, Good, and Excellent. The VP satisfaction survey is attached, and users are welcome to use it in its current format or customize it for their needs. Satisfaction with each item varied; 58% of students rated the VP simulating real life as average, good, or excellent, and 93% of students rated the VP helping to formulate questions about mood symptoms as average, good, or excellent. Discussion The VP version presented here has been significantly enhanced by the addition of over 800 suggestions made by study participants in the process of interacting with the VP. VP responses to these suggestions were created as well. In addition, to respond to students' comments about the VP interaction, we added a feature that gives the user response options to choose from in case the VP requires question clarification.
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