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Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology

BACKGROUND: Virtual patients are a recent addition to the educational arsenal to develop non-technical skills in undergraduate health professionals. The Virtual Simulated Patient Resource (www.vspr.net.au) is a web-based resource that uses branching, narrative virtual patients to develop knowledge,...

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Autores principales: Peddle, Monica, Bearman, Margaret, Mckenna, Lisa, Nestel, Debra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6373120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30805205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41077-019-0088-7
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author Peddle, Monica
Bearman, Margaret
Mckenna, Lisa
Nestel, Debra
author_facet Peddle, Monica
Bearman, Margaret
Mckenna, Lisa
Nestel, Debra
author_sort Peddle, Monica
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Virtual patients are a recent addition to the educational arsenal to develop non-technical skills in undergraduate health professionals. The Virtual Simulated Patient Resource (www.vspr.net.au) is a web-based resource that uses branching, narrative virtual patients to develop knowledge, attitude and practice of all categories of non-technical skills in undergraduate health professionals. However, there is limited literature exploring how the interaction with a virtual patient influences the development of knowledge, attitude and practice of non-technical skills in undergraduate nursing students. METHODS: An intrinsic case study method, using focus groups and individual interviews, enabled exploration of the experience of undergraduate nursing students when interacting with a virtual patient to develop non-technical skills. Purposive sampling identified participants to address the research question. Framework analysis supported by a codebook enabled deductive and inductive data analysis. RESULTS: Forty-five first-year and 31 third-year students consented to participate. Findings indicated that the different years interacted differently with the virtual patients. Four themes were recognised in the data: how the virtual patients enabled learning non-technical skills, learning surrounding the virtual patient encounter, changing the way students perceive practice and potential limitations to learning. CONCLUSIONS: Interactions with virtual patients influence learning knowledge, attitudes and practice of non-technical skills in undergraduate nursing students via authenticity in the virtual patient interaction, socialisation to the professional role, vicarious learning and learning by making mistakes. Potential limitations to learning from virtual patient interactions include fear, overconfidence, groupthink and confusion. To manage limitations to learning, facilitation approaches, opportunities for reflection, constructive feedback and debriefing may be key. This study demonstrates learning non-technical skills via interactions with virtual patients can change the way students perceive practice, with learning transferable to the clinical setting to support safe and competent patient care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s41077-019-0088-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-63731202019-02-25 Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology Peddle, Monica Bearman, Margaret Mckenna, Lisa Nestel, Debra Adv Simul (Lond) Research BACKGROUND: Virtual patients are a recent addition to the educational arsenal to develop non-technical skills in undergraduate health professionals. The Virtual Simulated Patient Resource (www.vspr.net.au) is a web-based resource that uses branching, narrative virtual patients to develop knowledge, attitude and practice of all categories of non-technical skills in undergraduate health professionals. However, there is limited literature exploring how the interaction with a virtual patient influences the development of knowledge, attitude and practice of non-technical skills in undergraduate nursing students. METHODS: An intrinsic case study method, using focus groups and individual interviews, enabled exploration of the experience of undergraduate nursing students when interacting with a virtual patient to develop non-technical skills. Purposive sampling identified participants to address the research question. Framework analysis supported by a codebook enabled deductive and inductive data analysis. RESULTS: Forty-five first-year and 31 third-year students consented to participate. Findings indicated that the different years interacted differently with the virtual patients. Four themes were recognised in the data: how the virtual patients enabled learning non-technical skills, learning surrounding the virtual patient encounter, changing the way students perceive practice and potential limitations to learning. CONCLUSIONS: Interactions with virtual patients influence learning knowledge, attitudes and practice of non-technical skills in undergraduate nursing students via authenticity in the virtual patient interaction, socialisation to the professional role, vicarious learning and learning by making mistakes. Potential limitations to learning from virtual patient interactions include fear, overconfidence, groupthink and confusion. To manage limitations to learning, facilitation approaches, opportunities for reflection, constructive feedback and debriefing may be key. This study demonstrates learning non-technical skills via interactions with virtual patients can change the way students perceive practice, with learning transferable to the clinical setting to support safe and competent patient care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s41077-019-0088-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC6373120/ /pubmed/30805205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41077-019-0088-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Peddle, Monica
Bearman, Margaret
Mckenna, Lisa
Nestel, Debra
Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title_full Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title_fullStr Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title_full_unstemmed Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title_short Exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
title_sort exploring undergraduate nursing student interactions with virtual patients to develop ‘non-technical skills’ through case study methodology
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6373120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30805205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41077-019-0088-7
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