Investigating the Effects of Virtual Standardized Patients on Fourth-year Medical Students' Medical Interviewing Skills and the Factors Influencing their Acceptance of VSPs as a Learning Tool

Date

2023-8-1

Author

Cevizci Karataş, Esra

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Efficient doctor-patient communication is critical to prevent medical misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. Medical student training must include an emphasis on effective interviewing skills. Although standardized patients are widely used in schools to teach interviewing techniques, the number of scenarios that can be portrayed by standardized patients is constrained by the availability of human actors. Therefore, using virtual standardized patients can provide medical students with more interactive and engaging learning opportunities, as well as a larger variety of scenarios in which to practice interviewing skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of using VSPs on medical students' interviewing skills, the NLU performance of VSPs, and the acceptance of using VSPs as learning tools in medical education. Convenience sampling was employed to select the participants and fourth year Hacettepe Medical Faculty students who were proficient in both medicine and communication participated in the study. For the VSP tool, The University of Southern California (USC) Standard Patient Platform was used. A total of 30 participants were randomly assigned to either spoken or typed groups. All participants in both groups completed two VSP cases: Otitis Externa and GERD. In order to give each participant, the chance to participate in both typed and spoken vi medical interviews, a counterbalancing method was also used, and the groups alternated positions over the course of the study. The data was collected from three diverse sources: VSP scores, medical interview transcripts, and the TAM questionnaire. The VSP Scores were analyzed by conducting a double MANOVA for each case. The results showed that combining input methods and attempts has no effect on the dependent variables. Additionally, there was no statistically significant variation in “input method” among the participants. However, the other independent variable “attempt” had significant differences in some dependent variables (type of questions and learning performance). Medical interview transcripts were analyzed qualitatively under four themes: NLU Correct, NLU Error, cheating, and Improper. The results showed that NLU accuracy increased from 76.9% to 85.6% in the first case and from 83.8% to 89.7% in the second case. Moreover, the highest NLU accuracy was achieved in the second case by the spoken group (86.7% to 90.3%). Lastly, the study discovered that perceived usefulness and satisfaction are both important factors to consider when determining whether or not to use a VSP. While perceived usefulness is a key predictor of intention to use, satisfaction is the most significant factor affecting whether someone wants to use the VSP in the future.

Subject Keywords

Virtual Patient, Virtual Standardized Patient, Technology Acceptance Model

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105236

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis