Planning a Collection of Virtual Patients to Train Clinical Reasoning: A Blueprint Representative of the European Population

Abstract

Background: Virtual patients (VPs) are a suitable method for students to train their clinical reasoning abilities. We describe a process of developing a blueprint for a diverse and realistic VP collection (prior to VP creation) that facilitates deliberate practice of clinical reasoning and meets educational requirements of medical schools.

Methods: An international and interdisciplinary partnership of five European countries developed a blueprint for a collection of 200 VPs in four steps: (1) Defining the criteria (e.g., key symptoms, age, sex) and categorizing them into disease-, patient-, encounter- and learner-related, (2) Identifying data sources for assessing the representativeness of the collection, (3) Populating the blueprint, and (4) Refining and reaching consensus.

Results: The blueprint is publicly available and covers 29 key symptoms and 176 final diagnoses including the most prevalent medical conditions in Europe. Moreover, our analyses showed that the blueprint appears to be representative of the European population.

Conclusions: The development of the blueprint required a stepwise approach, which can be replicated for the creation of other VP or case collections. We consider the blueprint an appropriate starting point for the actual creation of the VPs, but constant updating and refining is needed.

Keywords: case-based learning; clinical reasoning; international collaboration; medical education; open educational resources; virtual patients.

Figure A1

Flowchart of a Delphi-like approach to reach consensus on the final diagnoses to be included in the blueprint.

Figure 1

Flowchart of our four-step approach to create the blueprint. (VP = Virtual patient).