Virtual patients (VPs) are interactive computer simulations used in healthcare education to help learners develop clinical skills like diagnosis and therapeutic decision-making. The increasing use of VPs responds to the need for safe practice environments for students, with various types including artificial patients, physical simulators, and case studies. A survey revealed that a significant majority of students found VPs beneficial for understanding cases and recommending them to peers.

1. Virtual Patients
1st March 2011
NOVICE
C Trace BVetMed MRCVS
eMedia Unit

2. What is a Virtual Patient (VP)?
• An interactive computer simulation of a patient that is
used in health care education (AAMC 2008)

3. Why use VP’s?
• Virtual patients allow the learner to take the role
of a health care professional and develop clinical
skills such as making diagnoses and therapeutic
decisions
• The use of virtual patient programmes is
increasing in healthcare education, partly in
response to increasing demands on health care
professionals and education of students but also
because they allow opportunity for students to
practice in a safe environment

4. Types of VP
• Artificial patient
• Physical simulator
• Case Studies

5. Sarah Baillie MRCVS
Most Innovative Teacher of the Year 2009
RCUK Women of Outstanding Achievement in SET 2010
Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow 2010
How did it
come to this?
The Haptic Cow

6. Ways of navigating through a case study:
• Linear • Branching • Exploratory
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•CASUS
•OpenLabyrinth •WebSP
•CAMPUS,
•DecisionSim
•Xerte

7. Factors to consider when developing a VP
• Who is your end user?
• Who is required to assist in the development of the VP?
• What do you want your user to achieve with the VP?
• Do you want the user to work independently, or in a group?
• How many people will use the VP?
• Does a tutor need to be present?
And many more…..
Cost: benefit ratio!

8. eCases at the RVC
• Currently case details are recorded and captured by
groups of students on rotations into Powerpoint
templates. They include text, images, audio clips and
videos.
• The best of these case records are repurposed into linear
VP’s, which are published on VetConnect. These are
going to be used for Directed Learning (DL) sessions for
the 3rd and 4th year BVetMed.
• In the future these eCases will be made into branching
VP’s for independent student use

9. eCases survey
• 78% of students think eCases gave them a better understanding of
their cases
• 66% of students think eCases helped them better appreciate how to
approach a case
The second half of the survey assessed how effective/useful eCases were
after they had been posted onto VetConnect as linear Virtual Patients:
• 72% think eCases helped them understand a similar case
• 59% think eCases were useful for revision
In addition:
• 87% would recommend looking at completed eCases to other
students;
• 77% would have liked to have been exposed to completed eCases
before rotations, many saying in 3rd and 4th year teaching.