Prof. Lena Heyn and her colleagues researched the usage of Virtual Patients, and we had the opportunity to hear the main conclusions from the lead author on Body Interact Community 2024.

 Speakers Presentations

Professor and leader of the Center for Health and Technology at the University of South-Eastern Norway, Professor Lena Heyn leads a strategic initiative about Health and Welfare services of the future at USN. She has supervised a PhD project investigating the use of Body Interact in the teaching of physical assessment skills for nursing students.

Implications on Learning in Virtual Simulations with Nursing Students

Does Facilitation Matter?

The benefits of implementing virtual simulation into the curriculum have been extensively described in various papers. As Professor Lena Heyn acknowledged, it helps prepare students for clinical practice without putting patients at risk, provides standardized learning conditions for all students, allows for the repetition of clinical experiences and encounters, and presents fewer logistical constraints concerning time and space needs.

The work by Prof. Heyn and colleagues aimed to explore facilitation and debriefing in simulation with virtual patients in nursing education.

From the research conducted Professor Heyn highlighted the different forms of facilitation and debriefing:

• Most simulation experiences allowed interaction between the student and the virtual patient, the software, the faculty, peers, or a combination of the previous.
• The information provided by the software could either be by delivering the scoring on how well the simulation was conducted, through warning prompts during the simulation or demonstration videos, and direct feedback.

One interesting point mentioned by Prof. Heyn was that students sometimes deliberately performed incorrect actions or made wrong decisions to learn from them. This is impossible to do with real patients. Hence, the flexibility and dynamic nature of this type of simulation with Virtual Patients.

Some of the conclusions of the analysis conducted showed that:

• The students emphasized the feedback provided by the software as being useful.
• Debriefing, although important, is not sufficient for learning.

Prof. Heyn concluded her presentation with some relevant messages:

• The faculty has an important role when it comes to Virtual Simulation.
• Virtual simulation produces similar effects on learning as traditional simulation.
• Virtual simulation is well-accepted or preferred by students.

By Daniela Abreu – Body Interact Instructional Designer