A Study to Design a Learning Tool “Virtual Patient” for Functional Diagnosis and Clinical Reasoning of Respiratory Dysfunction in the Undergraduate Physiotherapy Curriculum

The aim of the present study was to develop and design software-based “virtual patient” for learning functional diagnosis with clinical reasoning of respiratory dysfunction based on need analysis and perception of faculty and student on utility in the undergraduate physiotherapy curriculum. The objective of the study was to design a framework of a respiratory case scenario that includes personal details, history taking, physical examination, differential diagnosis, investigations, functional impairment, and diagnosis, design a prototype of the virtual patient case scenario using software in a virtual environment created in oculus quest, obtain faculty and student feedback, and analyze the feedback. The result of the study obtained on feedback analysis suggests that the virtual patient case scenario (prototype) contains the relevant information in an organized and sequenced manner. The virtual patient case scenario on the virtual reality platform will be helpful as a teaching and learning modality. The study concluded that the present virtual simulated case scenario (prototype) with more cases helps to develop functional diagnosis and clinical reasoning skills as a part of the undergraduate physiotherapy curriculum.