This project is part of a PhD study exploring how virtual patients (computerised patient cases) can be used to teach students to make clinical decisions. The project uses a newly designed system and is based on models of how doctors learn to make decisions. The intention is to help medical students to learn to make diagnostic and management decisions. It also looks at how the feedback that is provided by a virtual patient changes both decisions and a student’s approach to learning. Students taking part will be randomized to one of several slightly different case designs. They will also be asked to take part in an optional focus group to discuss their experiences, but students do not need to do this to take part in the rest of the study

Who is Involved?

The research is led by Dr Robert Jay, a PhD student at Edge Hill University. He is supervised by Professors John Sandars and Jeremy Brown from Edge Hill University. Also supporting this are Professor Emma Wilson from the University of Nottingham and Professor Rakesh Patel from Queen Mary University London. Funding for the project has been provided by the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) through a PhD studentship. Isabel Healthcare, a commercial health technology company, have provided free access to their system for project users. Neither of these organizations has any control over the research project but can review the anonymised results after it has been completed. The study has been reviewed by Edge Hill Research Ethics Committee.

What are the risks and benefits of taking part? 

The virtual patient system and the cases we are using have been specifically written to help you develop your clinical reasoning skills. Each case also contains detailed feedback on both your knowledge and the reasoning skills needed to solve the case. We hope that taking part will help you to prepare for both your exams and your future clinical practice. We cannot guarantee any improvement!  This  is what the study is finding out, but we hope you will find it useful. Quotes from several of your peers who tested the cases for us are shown on this page. This study requires quite a bit of your time to complete. Its difficult to know how long each case will take for you to complete. We have tested the cases with final-year medical students and they usually take between 20 minutes and 1 hour to complete, depending on how difficult the cases are and how you approach them. The average time was between 35 and 45 minutes per case. You can take a break during the case if you wish and space each group of cases over several days if you need to. We do however anticipate that the time commitment in total will be around 12 hours over a 12 week period. Whilst you will be free to withdraw from the study should you wish, it is important that as many as possible of those who start the study are able to finish it, so please consider the time commitment when deciding if you want to take part.  

What happens if I take part? 

If you have decided to take part you will be asked to review the participant information sheet (There are separate PI sheets for both phases of the project, please review the sheet for phase 2) and complete an online consent form. We will then give you access to a mock exam at the start and end of the project. This will be a 100-question single best-answer test and is designed to be similar to your final exams. It has been written by people with experience in writing medical student exams but may not be identical to the type of question you are asked. After this, we will give you access to the Isabel Clinical Educator Platform. We will give you some information on how to use the system and you will then be asked to undertake a series of 10 cases over 10 weeks (1 per week).   After each case, we will release feedback on your performance and we do ask that you review this feedback.  After you have completed the cases we will ask you to complete your mock exam and fill in a short survey about your experiences. The cases and the assessments will need to be completed in a specific time frame so it is important that you are happy to do this.  

After you complete the cases we will offer you the opportunity to take part in a short focus group or interview describing your experiences with using the software. This will be voluntary and you do not need to do this to take part in the rest of the study. The study team will also ask for permission to access your exam scores from both last year and this year, which your medical school has agreed to provide to us with your permission. 

What will you do with my data? 

If you agree to take part in the study, we will ask your medical school for your exam results from both this year and last year. The Isabel system will also store your performance on the cases. Once you have completed the study, we will download your assessment from the mock exam and case scores and match all your results together, When we have done this, we will delete all your personal data and only identify you as a number. We will not share your performance data with anyone else. If you participate in the focus groups these will be recorded and transcribed and then all personal information will be removed.