A Virtual Patient-Physician Encounter

• Abstract:
  A Virtual Patient-Physician Encounter is an interactive multimedia CD-ROM, which was designed to assess the clinical reasoning skills of second-year medical students in the University of Texas-Houston Medical School. The rationale for developing a multimedia simulation initially was to facilitate the testing of second year medical students reasoning skills using a common clinical situation. Therefore there was a need to develop a product, which would enable us to understand how second year medical students made clinical decisions given the information on a patient that they would normally see in a clinical situation.
  
  The simulation is presented in the following manner. The user is given directions on how to use the program. The user is then asked to input an identification number before being introduced to the virtual patient. The user will then select from a menu of choices from history, physical examination and diagnostic tests. The user also has the option of taking notes on the virtual patient at any point during the simulation. The user is then asked to choose from a given list of diagnosis and also to provide justification for choosing a diagnosis. Throughout the simulation, the user’s navigational path along with the notes taken is saved as a separate file for analysis.
  
  Although the original intent of the simulation was to be an evaluation module, a beta-testing with the faculty at the University of Texas – Houston Medical School revealed that they were unanimous in their opinion that the module could best be used as a template for further development for instructional purposes. The simulation is yet to be tested with medical students and we hope to conduct esting and evaluation of the product with a sample of second year medical students beginning in the Spring of 2000.
  
  
• Development platforms:
  The simulation was developed with Authorware software because of its tracking capabilities and incorporation of multimedia like video, voice-overs, text and graphics. The development team included a content expert from the Department of Pathology who designed the clinical case, an instructional designer, a programmer who also designed the interface and an audio/video editor.
  
  
• Publication:
  G. Varagoor, A. Nguyen, B. Bassham, P. Butler: A Virtual Patient-Physician Encounter. Advances in Teaching and Learning Day at UT-Houston, Feb 1, 2000.

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