Teaching Medicine In A Virtual Environment

Main Category: Medical Students / Training
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 29 Oct 2008 - 11:00 PDT

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Soon after students arrive at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine next fall, they likely will get a call in the middle of the night from a "virtual patient."

The computer-generated patient will speak like a real human being complaining of ailments ranging from a common cold to cardiac arrest. How well students treat and advise their virtual patients on the spot will be a part of their evaluation. Avatars of different ages will seek the medical students' care throughout their four years in school.

The avatar is part of the high-tech program called MyCaseSpace. The program will be helping teach medicine in Orlando, but can be adapted for a variety of instruction anywhere on the globe. Several American universities are already working with its creator, UCF Assistant Professor David Segal, to adapt the program for their institutions and their particular courses.

Segal developed the software for his health classes at UCF so students could learn how to properly evaluate and diagnose conditions. The system will allow professors to add dynamic basic science and clinical cases to supplement their uniquely integrated curriculum at the College of Medicine, he said.

"It's interactive and a way to make it fun for students while they learn to make better decisions," Segal said. "And they learn. There's an assessment tool built into this program to validate that the technology is enhancing their learning."

Jim Wolford-Ulrich, associate professor at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, calls the program electrifying.

"This is an amazing program that brings learning alive for students," Wolford-Ulrich aid. He is working with Segal to adapt the program for the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne. "This model allows for experiential learning for students on line."

The unique avatars are one of many examples of how the UCF College of Medicine will harness the best traditional and cutting-edge techniques to educate the next generation of doctors.

Segal has degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and he has served as a fellow in neurology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He is an assistant professor of Health Professions Cardiopulmonary Sciences in the College of Health & Public Affairs. He also is certified in information technology and has been developing game software to help his students learn complicated information and sharpen critical thinking skills.

He blended his science background and programming expertise to create MyCaseSpace and help the digital generation learn. That's what he calls this generation of students who grew up using a variety of multimedia that 30 years ago hadn't even been invented yet.

Segal clearly enjoys his work. His avatars speak 13 languages with varying accents, and they can sneeze, cough and even go into cardiac arrest. He can program them to display symptoms related to a course's lesson plan for a particular week or ailments that students learned about several weeks ago.

Segal also can program the avatars to make emergency calls to students in the middle of the night or to come into a virtual clinic to get a check up.

The Web-based program will help students learn a variety of skills they will have to perfect before becoming practicing doctors. Those skills include taking medical histories, deciphering between critical symptoms and those that may be masking other conditions and matching up symptoms with necessary tests to determine a diagnosis.

But the virtual patients are just part of the story. Because the program is dynamic and can be changed with a few keystrokes, patients in the virtual world can have family members who make demands of the doctors and nurses and other personnel who assist them.

The program is the first of its kind to blend so many elements. And it can be adapted to other fields as well. Any course that requires students to make critical decisions in problem-based case scenarios would benefit from this new, interactive tool, Segal said.

For example, law students have to decide when and how to do depositions or interrogate witnesses, nurses have to evaluate and interpret patients, and counselors must talk with clients about sensitive issues.

"It's engaging and fun," Segal said. "And because it's fun, the students like it and will actually use it to better their education. In the end, that's what it is about -- making better doctors, lawyers and teachers out of our students."

The University of Central Florida is a metropolitan research university that ranks as the 6th largest in the nation with more than 50,000 students. UCF's first classes were offered in 1968. The university offers impressive academic and research environments that power the region's economic development. UCF's culture of opportunity is driven by our diversity, Orlando environment, history of entrepreneurship and our youth, relevance and energy.

University of Central Florida