Use of Virtual Interactive Patient Encounters to Prepare First-Year Medical Students for Clinical Practice.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Skills Assessment
• Biomedical Sciences Integration

Background:

• The Step 2 Clinical Skills exam's dissolution necessitates early clinical skills training in medical programs.
• Traditional early clinical teaching faces barriers: poor biomedical science integration, time constraints, and learner overwhelm.
• Virtual Interactive Patient (VIP) videos offer a novel solution to integrate clinical learning early.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of using VIP videos to teach and assess clinical skills in preclerkship medical students.
• To determine if VIP videos can successfully integrate clinical skills with biomedical science curriculum.

Main Methods:

• First-year medical students used interactive VIP videos in a clinically integrated biomedical science course.
• Students completed clinical documentation tasks (care plans, problem statements, reasoning) after each VIP encounter.
• Faculty evaluated student responses using a 4-level scoring scale; student feedback was also collected.

Main Results:

• VIP encounters were feasible to produce and well-received by students.
• Most students achieved high scores (levels 3-4) in patient care plans (82-94%) and problem representation (91-94%).
• Student performance in clinical reasoning showed variability (40-82%), indicating areas for focused development.

Conclusions:

• VIP videos are an effective tool for integrating clinical skills into early medical education.
• This approach successfully assesses student clinical documentation and reasoning abilities.
• VIP encounters represent a promising, scalable solution for undergraduate medical education.