Collaborative Development of Feedback Concept Maps for Virtual Patient-Based Clinical Reasoning Education: Mixed...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Reasoning
• Health Professions Education

Background:

• Concept maps are effective tools for teaching clinical reasoning (CR), enabling documentation and connection of findings, tests, diagnoses, and treatments.
• Integrating concept maps with virtual patients allows for automated feedback.
• Collaborative creation of feedback concept maps by multiple health professionals may address the nonlinear nature of CR and incorporate diverse perspectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a collaborative process for creating feedback concept maps within virtual patient-based CR education.

Main Methods:

• Health professionals from various specialties and backgrounds individually created concept maps.
• Structured workshops were used to achieve consensus on these concept maps.
• Medical students participated in focus groups to discuss the generated concept maps.
• Qualitative content analysis and descriptive comparison were employed to analyze the data.

Main Results:

• Four workshops involved 14 health professionals, resulting in consensus concept maps with more nodes and connections than individual maps.
• Consensus concept maps were well-received, though their scope and content varied.
• Two focus groups with 9 medical students revealed varied opinions on concept map features, balancing depth and flexibility.

Conclusions:

• Consensus workshops provide a constructive method for developing feedback concept maps that incorporate multiple health professional viewpoints.
• The resulting concept maps are perceived as useful and acceptable by students.
• Further research is needed to optimize collaborative concept map creation and identify features that enhance learner outcomes.