Grant Recipients
Thomas McFarlane, School of Pharmacy
Robin Andrade, Centre for Work Integrated Learning
(Project Timeline: November 2024 - October 2025)
Description
Students face challenges applying pharmacy concepts to patient care environments, often falling short of preparing them for clinical scenarios (Krueger, 2013). Standardized patients (SPs) are trained to portray a patient role, assess clinical skills, and provide feedback on student performance (University of Michigan, 2019). However, challenges such as time, budget, and class sizes limit in-person practice. Simulation offers an alternative, but barriers remain (cost, curricular schedules, class sizes). Pharmacy students request more opportunities to practice with SPs to improve clinical and communication skills. Introducing AI-driven Virtual Standardized Patients (VSPs) can enable students to engage in realistic patient interactions.
This project will evaluate the effectiveness of VSPs and provide evidence supporting their use in pharmacy education by demonstrating how these simulations can improve understanding and retention of educational material and boost patient counselling and communication confidence. We will capture student insights using a Likert scale and a mixed-method survey.
Project Objectives
Research Question: How can integrating a Virtual Standardized Patient (VSP) Artificial Intelligence platform improve the educational outcomes of pharmacy students?
The intended outcomes of the Patient Pro project are aimed at enhancing student learning and teaching methodologies in Pharmacy education at UW. Its fundamental goals are to:
- Assess potential improvement of diagnostic proficiency by comparing assessment questions from a cohort using the platform to those from a cohort that has not used the platform.
- Evaluate clinical decision-making skills
- Assess a potential Increase in interpersonal skills by comparing communication scores from a cohort using the platform to a cohort not using the platform.
- Adapt to technological integration