Game-Based Virtual Patients – Educational Opportunities and Design Challenges

High-fidelity virtual patients afford unlimited opportunity for practice in a virtual clinical setting and present multiple design challenges for developers of game-based simulations. Virtual patients allow students the opportunity to experience varied medical conditions as well as interact with patients with wide-ranging socio-economic and cultural factors. Practice with virtual patients also can improve both the accuracy and speed of cognitive, behavioral and psychomotor tasks. Virtual patients can be designed and adapted to simulate high-risk, low-incidence variations of medical conditions as well as altered to reflect regional, social, economic, behavioral and cultural factors. As opposed to simulations that use physical clinical settings and high-fidelity simulators, virtual-patient simulations provide ubiquitous, asynchronous learning and practice opportunities. Game-based simulations can provide instantaneous assessment and debriefing, both individually and in group settings. For these reasons, there is a growing interest in virtual patients for a broad range of applications, including academic, professional and military. While the technology is promising, the design challenges for virtual patients simulations, however, are numerous and evolving. For example, the visual and auditory fidelity of patient simulations demands precision derived from a broad range of available medical data. This paper explores the complexities of designing virtual patients that incorporate a multitude of patient factors and uses as a reference a current virtual patient simulation developed for the University of Texas at Arlington College of Nursing and a metropolitan free-standing hospital. 2010 Paper No. 10404 Page 1 of 11 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Marjorie A. Zielke, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas and is the principal investigator on First Person Cultural Trainer. Dr. Zielke has served as the project manager on a series of culturally related militaryfunded simulation projects over the last several years. Her areas of research are cyberpsychology and hyper-realistic simulations and she works in the intelligence, health and marketing sectors. Dr. Zielke received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas, and also has an MBA and a masters in international business. Judy LeFlore, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Nursing at UT Arlington, College of Nursing (UTACON). She is the Director of UTACON’s Pediatric, Acute Care Pediatric and Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Programs and is a Nurse Practitioner at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, Texas. She also serves on the Serious Games Initiative through the University of Texas System. Frank Dufour, Ph.D., teaches sound design for digital arts. He created one of the first all-digital recording studios in France specialized in digital sound restoration for audio publications and sound design for animation movies and video productions. He is involved in the “First Person Cultural Trainer” project developed for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and Joint Forces Command. Gary Hardee is a Research Project Manager and graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has many years of professional media experience and is involved with three UT Dallas projects involving virtual patient and cultural training simulations. Contributing authors: Meghan Huber ([email protected]), Pat Thomas ([email protected]), Ken Kanipe ([email protected]); Ed Whestone ([email protected]), Adam Buxkamper ([email protected]). University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at Arlington Marjorie Zielke, Ph.D. Judy LeFlore, Ph.D. Frank Dufour, Ph.D. Gary Hardee University of Texas at Dallas University of Texas at Arlington University of Texas at Dallas University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, Texas Arlington, Texas Richardson, Texas Richardson, Texas [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 201