A Scenario-Based Virtual Patient Program to Support Substance Misuse Education

Abstract

Objective. To evaluate virtual patient (VP) programs for injecting equipment provision (IEP) and opiate substitution therapy (OST) services with respect to confidence and knowledge among preregistration pharmacist trainees. Methods. Preregistration trainee pharmacists pilot-tested the VP programs and were invited to complete pre/post and 6-month assessments of knowledge and perceived confidence. Results. One hundred six trainees participated and completed the pre/postassessments. Forty-six (43.4%) participants repeated the assessments at six months. Scores in perceived confidence increased in all domains at both time points postprogram. Knowledge scores were greater posteducation than preeducation. Knowledge scores were also greater six months after education than preeducation. Knowledge scores at six months were lower than posteducation for both programs. Conclusion. Virtual patients programs increased preregistration pharmacists' knowledge and confidence with regard to IEP and OST immediately after use and at six months postprogram. There was a loss of clinical knowledge over time but confidence change was sustained.

A Narrative Overview of the Effectiveness of E-learning in Pharmacy Education

“…Eight (14.3%) studies involved pharmacists [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], one (1.8%) involved pre-registration pharmacists [18], forty-six (82.1%) involved pharmacy undergraduate students and one (1.8%) involved both pharmacists and pharmacy students [9]. The number of participants ranged from eight in the smallest study [34], up to seven hundred and ninety-two in the largest [13].…”

“…Learning was also assessed subjectively, through pre-, mid-and post-intervention surveys in twenty-six (46.4%) studies [11,12,[14][15][16][17][18][19]23,25,29,30,35,37,[41][42][43]45,46,50,52,56,57,59,62,64] and all but two [19,42] of these studies reported that the e-learning intervention was effective. Taglieri et al, [19] investigated the effect of completion of online virtual patient cases on student performance and confidence in mock clinic visits.…”

“…Despite improved performance in mock clinic visits compared to a control group who did not complete the virtual cases, there was no change in student confidence post-intervention. Four (7.1%) studies [9,12,18,51] demonstrated that the effect of the e-learning intervention could be maintained beyond the short-term. [11] compared an online synchronous lecture on drug diversion to the same lecture, delivered face-toface.…”

“…Three (5.4%) [25,55,57] of the nine studies that reviewed blended learning methods, failed to assess the effectiveness of the e-learning intervention independently of the face-to-face teaching. Twenty-six (46.4%) studies [11,12,[14][15][16][17][18][19]23,25,29,30,35,37,[41][42][43]45,46,50,52,56,57,59,62,64] measured the effectiveness of e-learning intervention on the basis of self-reported data. These findings are therefore vulnerable to response bias as well as recall bias, when participants were required to make a post-intervention assessment of their pre-intervention skills, knowledge or confidence [65,66].…”

Virtual patient educational intervention for the development of shared decision-making skills: a pilot study

“…Historically, the majority of VP cases have not focused on SDM, focusing either on the technical aspects of care 10 or patient-centred counselling. 11 In real practice clinicians are required to do both; it is not acceptable to be kind and caring but clinically incompetent and vice versa. We therefore designed a VP that allows the user to practice SDM, drawing on their technical skills as well as their ability to have a patient-centred conversation.…”