gms | German Medical Science

14. Workshop der gmds-Arbeitsgruppe "Computerunterstützte Lehr- und Lernsysteme in der Medizin (CBT)" und des GMA-Ausschusses "Neue Medien"

Institut für Didaktik & Bildungsforschung im Gesundheitswesen (IDBG),
Private Universität Witten/Herdecke

16.04. - 17.04.2010, Witten

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Virtual Patients in medical education: what can be their pedagogical contribution?

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  • corresponding author Bas De Leng - Department of Educational Development and Research, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie. Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung. 14. Workshop der gmds-Arbeitsgruppe "Computerunterstützte Lehr- und Lernsysteme in der Medizin (CBT)" und des GMA-Ausschusses "Neue Medien". Witten, 16.-17.04.2010. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2010. Doc10cbt41

doi: 10.3205/10cbt41, urn:nbn:de:0183-10cbt412

Published: April 13, 2010

© 2010 De Leng.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

Text

Although many good reasons are put forward to support the usefulness of virtual patients in medical education, currently their actual use and impact are modest at all levels of medical education, from undergraduate and postgraduate education to continuous professional development [2], [5]. However, this situation is set to change rapidly with lower costs of the technology to develop and apply VPs, the availability of technology standards to guarantee their interoperability, collaborative development and sharing of VP collections by consortia, acceptance of VPs as equivalent to real-life clinical experiences by accreditation agencies for medical schools and acceptance of the use of VPs for high stakes assessments.

Despite the obvious value of VPs, the increasing feasibility of broad application of VPs and the acceptance of VPs as an important educational tool by authoritative bodies, there is a paucity of information on how to design VPs for different educational scenarios and how to integrate them in medical education [1], [3]. Because the ultimate goal of medical education is to deliver highly competent professionals who will provide optimal health care we also need to prove that VP educational interventions has positive effects on physicians’ competencies as measured in the classroom, educational laboratory, and health care settings [4].

In this presentation the emphasis will be on the use of VPs in learning in different educational scenarios and the implications for design and integration of VPs in the curriculum.

Outline

References

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