Immersive Virtual Patients with Abnormal Clinical Conditions for Medical Student

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This work proposes to expose and provide feedback to medical students on abnormal clinical conditions through the use of immersive virtual patients (VPs). Immersive VPs are highly interactive, computer-generated, life-size virtual 3D characters. As medical educators have difficulty in providing students with sufficient experiences with abnormal clinical conditions, testing students using patients with abnormal findings has been difficult to plan. VPs can fill this critical education need for interactive exposure. The aim is to use a VP system to provide students with interactions and feedback in scenarios involving abnormal clinical findings. The dynamic attribute of VPs provides significant benefits in presenting abnormal conditions. The goal is to establish the use of VPs as a powerful addition to SPs and physical simulators in the medical education curriculum. Aim #1 - Develop a proof-of-concept set of virtual patients with blurred vision to expose medical students to abnormal findings. We propose creating a set of three experiences of a virtual patient with blurred vision. The blurred vision will be caused by one of the following: 1) An injury to one of the cranial nerves, 2) diabetic retinal disease, or 3) cranial mass (brain tumor). All conditions begin with a similar starting interview. But as the interview progresses, the student needs to employ careful visual observation and interactive exams. Blurred vision is difficult to reproduce with standardized patients and has no existing mannequin or physical simulators. Aim #2 - Develop a system capable of providing feedback to medical students on their knowledge of abnormal findings. The system will evaluate the student's interaction with the blurred vision virtual patient. The system will then provide feedback to the student on their conduct of the patient-doctor interaction. The feedback will focus on the interview, eye-exam, observation of key symptoms, and differential diagnosis. Aim #3 - Pilot-test the integration of abnormal findings virtual patients into the education curriculum. We propose to integrate the resulting system into the medical education curriculum. At the University of Florida, 3rd year medical students in their surgical rotation will be exposed to the blurred vision virtual patient. After covering blurred vision conditions in lectures, students would experience a virtual patient presenting one of three blurred vision conditions.