Using virtual cases to develop diagnostic skills

摘要

Background: Clinical reasoning is one of the most important skills that medical students need to develop. Our medical students learn clinical reasoning in small group discussion sessions and during their clinical attachments. We wanted to provide additional opportunities for them to develop these important skills. Context: Our undergraduate pae-diatric curriculum is based on 25 clinical presentations, and is delivered on the website myPaedi-atn'cs. We used simple show-and-hide case examples in each presentation to illustrate to students how to use the knowledge and skills they acquire to solve the clinical presentations. These are popular with students but provide little opportunity for interaction. Innovation: Based on two commonly available formats for the virtual patient, neither of which had fully met the specific needs of our undergraduate students, we developed hybrid software: evPaeds.