Examining Tina: A standardized digitalized patient for advanced health assessment and diagnostic reasoning

INTRODUCTION:Ê To meet this yearÕs theme, we focus on integration and adoption of innovative teaching strategies for use in the online health assessment classroom for graduate students. Currently, I educate nurse practitioner students within MSN and DNP curriculums in a primarily online health assessment course. This course is taught either completely online or as mixed mode/hybrid version with face-to-face lab, and often calls for innovative teaching strategies. Health assessment courses often require collection of health history with concurrent documentation in the form of a SOAP note. This health assessment course requires this collection, but has adopted Shadow HealthÕs Digital Clinical ExperienceTM (DCE) to provide students with a dynamic and immersive experience through a clinical examination of a digital standardized patient named Tina JonesTM. The aims of this assessment are 1) to examine student perceptions when using digital standardized examinations, history and assessment findings, and documentation and 2) to explore relationships between student use of digital patient with learning style, exam grades, and SOAP note scores. METHOD: This research uses a mixed method design with qualitative-focused semi-structured interviews, along with descriptive and correlational analyses with the sample of graduate MSN and DNP students. This research will explore student perceptions pre and post intervention within an advanced health assessment course in an online environment. Demographic data, learning styles, and curriculum data will be obtained for descriptive purposes. A qualitative assessment was deemed most appropriate to explore how student perceptions of digital patients influence the satisfaction with this teaching strategy. The approach was inspired by verbal discussions over the past year plus teaching nursing education courses and examining online education. RESULTS: This study is currently in progress. I will present preliminary findings based on the questions. Data collection will end early Spring 2013 (February-March). DISCUSSION:Ê Findings from this study can be used to strengthen advanced health assessment courses. By incorporating this innovative teaching strategy, we seek to promote interventions that will promote successful teaching in the online environment. Use of this immersive experience with a digital standardized patient will add strength and substance to this course.