History-taking instruction for baccalaureate nursing students by virtual patient training: A retrospective study

History taking is difficult for nursing students with little clinical experience. Virtual patients (VPs) can supplement traditional teaching to some extent. However, the high cost of VPs limits their widespread personal use. "Sun Yat-sen University Nursing Education Platform" (SYSU-NEP) is a software program designed on WeChat that can provide VPs for nursing history-taking sessions. SYSU-NEP is characterized by ease of use, accessibility and capacity to facilitate autonomous learning.

To assess history-taking instruction for baccalaureate nursing students after VP training using WeChat.

This was a retrospective analysis of the effectiveness of SYSU-NEP, which provided 13 VPs for history-taking instruction based on the Functional Health Pattern framework. Each VP session consisted of 17 parts, and data were derived from conversations between the baccalaureate nursing students and the VPs from September 2016 to January 2017. The effectiveness of history taking was assessed by the hit rate for each of the 17 VP parts. Hit rates in this case identify the completeness of the students' patient history taking. Furthermore, software usage by the students was assessed by an automated survey on SYSU-NEP.

Fifty-seven students participated in 570 VP history-taking sessions. Of the 17 VP parts, the five parts with the lowest hit rates were personal history (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-0.00), Coping/Stress and Self-Perception/Self-Concept (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-0.00), Cognitive Perception (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-2.50), Activity/Exercise (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-3.00) and Sexual-Reproductive (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-12.81). Thirty-six students participated in the survey voluntarily and thirty-five students (97%) believed that the software was helpful for learning about patient history taking.

SYSU-NEP provides a platform for nursing students for history taking self-practice. Students' weaknesses were identified clearly through data analysis. The students were enthusiastic about the usefulness of the software.