Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food, Monash University, Notting Hill, VIC 3168, Australia.
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia.
Nutrients. 2024 Mar 22;16(7):914. doi: 10.3390/nu16070914.
Although effective communication is fundamental to nutrition and dietetics practice, providing novice practitioners with efficacious training remains a challenge. Traditionally, human simulated patients have been utilised in health professions training, however their use and development can be cost and time prohibitive. Presented here is a platform the authors have created that allows students to interact with virtual simulated patients to practise and develop their communication skills. Leveraging the structured incorporation of large language models, it is designed by pedagogical content experts and comprises individual cases based on curricula and student needs. It is targeted towards the practice of rapport building, asking of difficult questions, paraphrasing and mistake making, all of which are essential to learning. Students appreciate the individualised and immediate feedback based on validated communication tools that encourage self-reflection and improvement. Early trials have shown students are enthusiastic about this platform, however further investigations are required to determine its impact as an experiential communication skills tool. This platform harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to bridge the gap between theory and practice in communication skills training, requiring significantly reduced costs and resources than traditional simulated patient encounters.
尽管有效的沟通是营养和饮食实践的基础，但为新手从业者提供有效的培训仍然是一个挑战。传统上，模拟患者在医疗保健专业培训中得到了应用，但是他们的使用和开发可能会受到成本和时间的限制。这里介绍的是作者创建的一个平台，该平台允许学生与虚拟模拟患者进行互动，以练习和发展他们的沟通技巧。该平台利用大型语言模型的结构化整合，由教学内容专家设计，并且基于课程和学生需求包含单独的案例。它针对建立融洽关系、提出难题、释义和犯错等实践，这些都是学习的关键。学生们喜欢基于经过验证的沟通工具提供的个性化和即时反馈，这鼓励了自我反思和改进。早期的试验表明，学生对这个平台很感兴趣，但是需要进一步的研究来确定它作为一种体验式沟通技巧工具的效果。这个平台利用人工智能的力量，弥合沟通技巧培训中理论与实践之间的差距，所需的成本和资源比传统的模拟患者接触要少得多。
