Guetterman Timothy C, Kron Frederick W, Campbell Toby C, Scerbo Mark W, Zelenski Amy B, Cleary James F, Fetters Michael D
Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.
Adv Med Educ Pract. 2017 Jul 25;8:505-512. doi: 10.2147/AMEP.S138380. eCollection 2017.
Despite interest in using virtual humans (VHs) for assessing health care communication, evidence of validity is limited. We evaluated the validity of a VH application, MPathic-VR, for assessing performance-based competence in breaking bad news (BBN) to a VH patient.
We used a two-group quasi-experimental design, with residents participating in a 3-hour seminar on BBN. Group A (n=15) completed the VH simulation before and after the seminar, and Group B (n=12) completed the VH simulation only after the BBN seminar to avoid the possibility that testing alone affected performance. Pre- and postseminar differences for Group A were analyzed with a paired -test, and comparisons between Groups A and B were analyzed with an independent -test.
Compared to the preseminar result, Group A's postseminar scores improved significantly, indicating that the VH program was sensitive to differences in assessing performance-based competence in BBN. Postseminar scores of Group A and Group B were not significantly different, indicating that both groups performed similarly on the VH program.
Improved pre-post scores demonstrate acquisition of skills in BBN to a VH patient. Pretest sensitization did not appear to influence posttest assessment. These results provide initial construct validity evidence that the VH program is effective for assessing BBN performance-based communication competence.
尽管人们对使用虚拟人（VH）来评估医疗保健沟通感兴趣，但有效性证据有限。我们评估了一种VH应用程序MPathic-VR在向VH患者传达坏消息（BBN）时评估基于表现的能力的有效性。
我们采用两组准实验设计，让住院医师参加一个为期3小时的BBN研讨会。A组（n = 15）在研讨会前后完成VH模拟，B组（n = 12）仅在BBN研讨会后完成VH模拟，以避免单独测试影响表现的可能性。A组研讨会前后的差异采用配对t检验进行分析，A组和B组之间的比较采用独立t检验进行分析。
与研讨会前的结果相比，A组研讨会后的分数显著提高，表明VH程序在评估BBN中基于表现的能力差异方面很敏感。A组和B组研讨会后的分数没有显著差异，表明两组在VH程序上的表现相似。
前后分数的提高表明在向VH患者传达BBN方面获得了技能。预测试致敏似乎没有影响后测试评估。这些结果提供了初步的结构效度证据，表明VH程序对于评估基于BBN表现的沟通能力是有效的。
