Psychological characteristics of students in learning clinical interview skills with the use of virtual patient

BACKGROUND: The goal of this exploratory study is to analyse which psychological characteristics of students are related to the effectiveness of learning clinical interview skills with the use of a virtual patient (VP). METHODS: The sample consisted of 29 final-year clinical psychology students. The authors’ VP tool was used for measuring and teaching clinical interview skills: building contact with the patient, gathering important information, and identifying the students’ mistakes. Psychological questionnaires were used to measure the students’ psychological features: need for cognitive closure, ability to achieve cognitive structure, beliefs in the changeability of human traits, level of hope, intelligence, positive vs negative affect, and academic knowledge. RESULTS: The most important aspect of the diagnostician’s psychological features which substantially influence effectiveness of learning interview skills is belief in the stability or changeability of human traits and the need to achieve cognitive closure. Participants who have a belief in human changeability are able to perform the task correctly even without training, while those who believe in human stability improve only slightly with training. Students with lower need of cognitive closure successfully learned to build a good relation with the patient. CONCLUSIONS: The study allows a better understanding of the phenomena occurring during the learning of clinical interview skills with the use of a VP. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-020-02344-6.