Virtual Patients

Virtual patients are proving to be a good way of delivering PBL, self-directed learning and assessment. Their success lies in the fact that each student can choose management strategies and become involved in the case before finding out what should have been done. This utilises the experiential cycle in developing deep learning.

The potential of virtual patients is highlighted by the existence of eViP who aim to collate and translate virtual patient cases.

Anyone can make a virtual patient case but it does take time! For a full case, maybe 8 hours! There are two open source programs which automate the process. The Visual Understanding Environment program allows information to be presented in a nonlinear form and is an ideal platform for presentations if you don't like to be restricted by going from one page to the next. It is ideal for virtual patient cases because a program called Open Labyrinth is able to convert these files into an interactive web file that gives the user choices on which path to follow.