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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2019 Dec 4;19(1):454.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-019-1887-1.

Virtual patients versus small-group teaching in the training of oral and maxillofacial surgery: a randomized controlled trial

Lukas B Seifert  1 , Octavian Socolan  2 , Robert Sader  2 , Miriam Rüsseler  3 , Jasmina Sterz  3
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Virtual patients versus small-group teaching in the training of oral and maxillofacial surgery: a randomized controlled trial

Lukas B Seifert et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Computerized virtual patients (VP) have spread into many areas of healthcare delivery and medical education. They provide various advantages like flexibility in pace and space of learning, a high degree of teaching reproducibility and a cost effectiveness. However, the educational benefit of VP as an additive or also as an alternative to traditional teaching formats remains unclear. Moreover, there are no randomized-controlled studies that investigated the use of VP in a dental curriculum. Therefore, this study investigates VP as an alternative to lecturer-led small-group teaching in a curricular, randomized and controlled setting.

Methods: Randomized and controlled cohort study. Four VP cases were created according to previously published design principles and compared with lecturer-led small group teaching (SGT) within the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery clerkship for dental students at the Department for Cranio-, Oral and Maxillofacial Plastic Surgery, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Clinical competence was measured prior (T0), directly (T1) and 6 weeks (T2) after the intervention using theoretical tests and a self-assessment questionnaire. Furthermore, VP design was evaluated using a validated toolkit.

Results: Fifty-seven students (VP = 32; SGT = 25) agreed to participate in the study. No competence differences were found at T0 (p = 0.56). The VP group outperformed (p < .0001) the SGT group at T1. At T2 there was no difference between both groups (p = 0.55). Both interventions led to a significant growth in self-assessed competence. The VP group felt better prepared to diagnose and treat real patients and regarded VP cases as a rewarding learning experience.

Conclusions: VP cases are an effective alternative to lecture-led SGT in terms of learning efficacy in the short and long-term as well as self-assessed competence growth and student satisfaction. Furthermore, integrating VP cases within a curricular Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clerkship is feasible and leads to substantial growth of clinical competence in undergraduate dental students.

Keywords: Dental education; Dental students; Education; Oral and maxillofacial surgery; Surgical education; Virtual patients.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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