A virtual surgery in general practice: Evaluation of a novel undergraduate virtual patient learning package

Figures & data

Table

Practice points

Increasingly VPs are being used in medical education. VPs can help to contextualise learning. Medical students find VPs, in a blended teaching approach, useful in their learning of general practice and primary care. VPs can be regarded as being highly usable by learners.

Figure 1. Image of ‘St Elsewhere Virtual Medical Practice’ home page.

Figure 2. Example of a VP in the ‘St Elsewhere Virtual Medical Practice’ learning package.

Figure 3. Respondents opinions on the usefulness of the various aspects of the VP learning package (*Mean Likert scores were: strongly agree = 5–strongly disagree = 1).

Table 1.  Students’ opinions on the rank order of the usefulness of various teaching methods in their general practice module

Description of teaching method
1st Clinical placement
2nd Lectures
3rd St Elsewhere
4th Textbooks
5th Small group work
6th E-video lectures

Table 2.  Respondents free-text comments of the usefulness of the VP learning package

Theme	N	Exemplar student comments
‘Practitioner’ experience	21	Able to bring things together and road testing what it is like to be a GP
		Good practise run in preparation for real practice
		Though not the real thing – gave me a feel of treating my 'own' patient
‘Patient’ experience	35	Opportunity to review real-life examples
		Chance to go through a case as a whole and consider situations that may arise in real life
		Made me think of the whole patient experience
‘Multisensory experience’	20	I enjoyed listening to scenarios
		“This is a good way of using e-learning. So often is just e-delivery – files on the web. Ability to interact and get feedback – just great!
		Visual files and images cemented my learning
		Images made it more in context; it was quite realistic
‘Learner centric’	66	Able to dip in and learn at my pace
		Easy to use and instant feedback made a worthwhile learning experience
		It was a useful tool for thinking through a problem, assessing my own knowledge and then reflecting on what I'd learnt
		Challenged me in a safe and constructive way