Piloting of Virtual Patient-Based Online Self-Study Quizzes for Developing Undergraduate Medical Students’ Clinical Reasoning Skills

Clinical reasoning, the application of medical knowledge to a patient’s problem, requires training in a safe environment. Learning tasks based on Virtual Patients (VP-tasks) simulate the clinical setting in a save way and integrate well into blended-learning environments, as synchronous tasks (face-to-face or online) or as asynchronous online tasks. The article presents the editorial process for developing VP-based self-study quizes (SSQ) and field-study results on students’ learning experiences and study habits. The editorial process initially only involved experienced clinical, educational and technical experts. To better match the tasks’ difficulty to students’ knowledge, junior doctors and advanced medical students joined in a later stage. Students (n = 351) rated the SSQs (n = 10) produced by the expanded team to match their knowledge better as compared to the SSQs (n = 13) developed by the initial expert editorial team. Students rated the online SSQs as more helpful as compared to similar face-to-face VP-tasks. Students’ free comments indicate their high acceptance of the SSQ-format. The SSQ-format is feasible for providing systematic online training in clinical reasoning, especially when working with a multi-level-educational editorial team and when a systematically structured blueprint of topics and learning goals drives the editorial work.