Virtual Patient

[henslice]

Opinion needed!

What are your thoughts on the use of virtual patient in medical education? By that I mean, medical students will get to practice history taking, perform physical exams, order labs and images and diagnose the virtual patient.

I'd imagine this will make problem-based learning more efficient and will probably help medical students develop their critical thinking skills, especially during the pre-clinical years.

Do you guys see a role for something like this in medicine?

[Lactic Folly]

Yes, definitely. As you said, simulated patients with intentionally (real-life) ambiguous presentations can help develop critical thinking skills in diagnosis. Also, it would be a way to ensure that students are exposed to the necessary breadth of patient presentations (for example, both common and uncommon presentations of critical diagnoses, which we cannot rely on chance alone for exposure during clinical rotations). I've seen a number of studies on this.

[henslice]

On 2/3/2019 at 2:00 PM, Lactic Folly said:

Yes, definitely. As you said, simulated patients with intentionally (real-life) ambiguous presentations can help develop critical thinking skills in diagnosis. Also, it would be a way to ensure that students are exposed to the necessary breadth of patient presentations (for example, both common and uncommon presentations of critical diagnoses, which we cannot rely on chance alone for exposure during clinical rotations). I've seen a number of studies on this.

 I believe we need something like this in medical education! It blows my mind that it doesn't exist yet (that I know of). 

[Lactic Folly]

Random links from quick Google search:

https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hp/ps/if-hp-ps-abstract-cognitive-biases-poster.pdf

https://www.improvediagnosis.org/clinical-reasoning-toolkit-educator-resources/

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/resources/resource/28789/decision-making-in-trauma-settings-simulation-to-improve-diagnostic-skills

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4776024/

[Mansi@30]

On 2/5/2019 at 7:20 AM, Lactic Folly said:

Random links from quick Google search:

https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hp/ps/if-hp-ps-abstract-cognitive-biases-poster.pdf

https://www.improvediagnosis.org/clinical-reasoning-toolkit-educator-resources/

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/resources/resource/28789/decision-making-in-trauma-settings-simulation-to-improve-diagnostic-skills

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4776024/

Thanks for sharing it. You have shared these links. It will be helpful to us. 

[JohnGrisham]

This exists already. There is a very comprehensive app called "Prognosis Your Diagnosis". It has ++ cases in many disciplines. 

[henslice]

On 2/28/2019 at 11:45 PM, JohnGrisham said:

This exists already. There is a very comprehensive app called "Prognosis Your Diagnosis". It has ++ cases in many disciplines. 

This app, I believe, is a step in the right direction! However, it still has a long way to go to simulate realistic patient encounter.