ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Learning and clinical reasoning experience of second-year medical pharmacology students and teachers with virtual patients developed using OpenLabyrinth
 
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Department of Pharmacology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, INDIA
 
 
Online publication date: 2023-05-16
 
 
Publication date: 2023-09-01
 
 
Electron J Gen Med 2023;20(5):em509
 
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
Objective:
To determine the perceived usefulness of a virtual case scenario developed and delivered through the OpenLabyrinth platform among medical students and teachers.

Methods:
20 second-year medical students and 12 teachers of pharmacology were invited to complete a virtual case scenario exercise. The participants accessed the case scenario using their laptops or mobile devices. Participants’ feedback was obtained using the electronic virtual patient consortium-developed questionnaire.

Results:
19 students and 12 teachers provided feedback. All the faculty members and 95% of students felt that they had to make the same decisions a doctor would have to make in real life; ‘authenticity of patient encounter’ received the highest percentage of positive responses and ‘the learning effect’ the least.

Conclusions:
The feedback obtained suggests that virtual case scenarios are likely to be well received by students and teachers. The availability of open-source software enables the use of this technology in resource-limited settings.

 
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