Pedagogical Approaches with Body Interact | Virtual Patient Competitions
In the past years, Clinical education has been undergoing a digital transformation, and virtual patient competitions are a prime example of how technology can enhance learning. These interactive competitions provide an engaging, gamified approach to teaching clinical reasoning, teamwork, and decision-making. In this post, we explore what virtual patient competitions are, their pedagogical underpinnings, and how they benefit students, educators, and curricula, and provide you some testimonials.
What are Virtual Patient Competitions?
Virtual Patient Competitions, often called Virtual Patient Challenges, involve groups of medical and/or nursing students dealing with the same virtual patient. Each team diagnoses, treats, and manages a virtual patient scoring points based on their performance and getting penalized for incorrect and harmful decisions. Points are awarded based on the rules set to the competition, but most of these will take into account the correctness of the diagnoses, evidence-based treatments, efficient use of resources, and patient outcomes, which are reflected in the metrics collected and displayed by Body Interact automatically. Sometimes, the time taken to manage the patient can also be one of the criteria.
The competitions that can be developed with Body Interact Virtual Patients often have multiple rounds, with top-performing teams advancing to the next level.
These competitions aim to simulate real-world clinical practice in a safe, controlled environment, allowing students to make critical decisions without risking patient safety. They combine the thrill of competition with the rigor of clinical education.
What are the relevant Pedagogical Theories regarding these competitions?
Virtual patient competitions are grounded in several key educational theories, as the design of the Virtual Patients itself is:
Constructivism
Students actively construct knowledge by engaging with realistic scenarios, enhancing retention and understanding.
Experiential Learning (Kolb)
Participants learn by doing, reflecting on their actions, and adapting their strategies in future rounds.
Cognitive Load Theory
The structured format helps direct cognitive resources toward learning, minimizing distractions from unnecessary elements.
Social Learning (Bandura)
These competitions emphasize collaborative decision-making and peer learning, fostering teamwork, effective communication, and the cultivation of empathy.
Gamification Principles
Points, rankings, and progression through rounds create motivation and engagement, driving active participation.
Simulation-Based Learning (SBL) Principles
One of the core components of SBL is the debriefing, which has been identified by students as being of great value as it promotes reflection, reinforces learning objectives, and bridges the gap between simulated experiences and real-world application.
What are the practical applications of implementing this strategy?
For students:
- Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a dynamic, competitive environment.
- Practice teamwork, leadership, and communication under time constraints.
- Reflection on actions and of actions to reinforce learning, through immediate feedback by Body Interact and the debriefing conducted by a facilitator.
- At a level of high school using this type of strategy allows students to explore possible career paths.
For professors:
- Use the competition data to identify students’ strengths and areas needing improvement.
- Facilitate debriefing sessions to discuss decision-making processes and outcomes.
- Integrate case-based discussions into broader curricular goals.
- Provide an engaging and stimulating learning experience while integrating key knowledge, clinical skills, and non-technical skills.
For curricula:
- Align cases with learning objectives to reinforce core clinical knowledge.
- Use competitions as formative assessments to determine students’ clinical reasoning.
- Incorporates various clinical specialties or even encourages collaboration between nursing and medical students.
What are the practical applications of implementing this strategy?
Active Learning
Students engage deeply with the content and with the virtual patients, which enhances retention compared to passive learning methods.
Critical Thinking
When using Body Interact critical scenarios it requires students to apply knowledge and make decisions under pressure.
Teamwork and Collaboration
Competitions emphasize the importance of working effectively with peers.
Feedback-Oriented
Immediate feedback and debriefs help students learn from mistakes in a low-stakes environment.
Safe Simulation
Students can practice handling from simpler to complex clinical cases without real-life consequences.
Assessment Fairness
All clinical cases are equally challenging and the scoring provided by the simulator is totally objective.
Resources and Logistical Flexibility
Body Interact Virtual Patients competitions only require access to the software, and a (or a set of) device (s) to run the software. So challenges can be conducted online or in-person, with most devices or multi-touch tables.
Virtual Patient Competitions Best Practices suggestions
To plan and conduct smooth Virtual Patient Competitions there are a few recommendations we highlight:
Clinical case selection
Select cases considering the students’ knowledge and skill level.
Set clear expectations
Provide detailed instructions and scoring information to all participants and provide access to Body Interact before the competition so that students feel comfortable.
Incorporate debriefing
Use debriefing sessions to reflect on performance and decisions.
Promote inclusivity
Ensure all students participate actively by assigning rotating roles within teams, and promote balanced teams (in terms of knowledge, skills, and clinical experience).
Use multidisciplinary clinical cases
Include elements that encourage collaboration with other health professions, if intended.
Tutor/Facilitator Support
Enhance the team learning experience by involving a tutor who can actively participate as a team member, providing guidance when necessary (with clear boundaries to ensure other teams don’t feel disadvantaged). Alternatively, the tutor can act as an observer, stepping in only for debriefing purposes.
Define roles
The team members should have roles assigned in the Virtual Patient Competition, and a leader should also be nominated.
Virtual patient competitions offer a dynamic, engaging approach to clinical education. They prepare students for real-world challenges while fostering critical skills such as teamwork, clinical reasoning, and effective decision-making. With thoughtful implementation, these competitions can become a cornerstone of modern clinical curricula, bridging the gap between theory and practice, and promoting the development of core competencies.
Who has implemented this instructional strategy?
HOSA, a student-led organization from the USA has been conducting regular Virtual Patient Challenges with Body Interact. In this edition a total of 64 teams competed, allowing students to showcase their talents and engage in a simulated clinical scenario together
In 2020, the Asian Medical Students Association – India (AMSA-India), in partnership with Body Interact, hosted a three-week fully online Virtual Patient Challenge
It is not just students that get engaged, in 2022, the International Nursing Association of Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) and Body Interact hosted the first-ever Virtual Patient Challenge at the INACSL Annual Conference
If you would like to host your own Virtual Patient Challenge, schedule a meeting with us!
Don’t miss the next Pedagogical Approach with Body Interact!
References
1. Bandura, A (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
2. Cook, DA, & Triola, MM (2009). Virtual patients: A critical literature review and proposed next steps. Medical Education, 43(4), 303–311.
3. Gamrat, C, Zimmerman, HT, Dudek, J, & Peck, K (2014). Personalized workplace learning: An exploratory study on digital badging within a teacher professional development program. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(6), 1136–1148.
4. Kapp, KM (2012). The gamification of Learning and Instruction. Game-Based and Strategies for Training and Education. Wiley
5. Kolb, DA (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
6. Miller, GE (1990). The assessment of clinical skills/competence/performance. Academic Medicine, 65(9), S63–S67.
