Rate That Doctor Android Application

[rtddev]

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Hello everyone

I just released an application on Google Play which is pretty relevant to this forum.

The application is called "Rate That Doctor." The idea is that you are rating empathy of current health profession students.

The research my lab primarily deals with is virtual patient research. Virtual patients are similar to standardized patients; however, they are computerized. When medical students interact with these virtual patients, they face many empathetic opportunities which are chances for the student to be empathetic. We took some of those responses and are giving people the chance to rate how empathetic the students were.

If you have an Android 4.0 or higher device, then you can download the application here.

Also, I have a website with some more information here.

I'm a full-time computer science Ph.D student so there may be some bugs or other issues so feel free to let me know of any issues you have.

 

[QofQuimica]

Please don't post the same thread in multiple forums. I have closed the other thread.

I don't have an android, so I can't try your app, but fwiw, I would like to know how your project deals with the issue of artificiality. I've seen a lot of real patients, and I've seen a lot of standardized patients/done role play/sim center, and it's just not the same. You're never acting "naturally" when you aren't working with real patients. At least, that's my experience.

 

[rtddev]

Sorry for the multiple posts.

To answer your question, our research is never claiming that virtual patients are perfect replacements for things like standardized patients where the encounters are more natural. What we can provide are opportunities which you rarely get as a medical student. For example, a standardized patient can't simulate every medical condition... one example being cranial nerve damage. We've created various cranial nerve virtual patients which provide students the opportunity to interact with that type of patient.

As for the realism, while yes it is not completely realistic because either its a 3d representation of a patient or something like that, you would be surprised at some of our findings which suggest how much virtual patients can affect medical students. For example, we ran a study looking at racial bias and found that even with virtual patients, medical students were treating the darker color virtual patients differently than the lighter colored virtual patients.

And regardless of the realism, these virtual patient interactions are more practice for the medical student that they can potentially access at all times of the day. While they may be artificial, they can still be pretty helpful.

 

[QofQuimica]

I wasn't meaning to suggest that you could learn nothing from virtual patients; sorry if it came across that way. It's just that there's always a sort of Hawthorne effect when you're in these contrived scenarios: people behave differently when they know someone is watching. Maybe virtual patients have an advantage here though; I think sim or other modalities where you know that not only are people watching, but you're being recorded, are the worst of all with regard to artificiality. People can even get performance anxiety in that kind of situation. I mean, have you taken Step 2 CS yet? You can't get more artificial than that. No one behaves in real life like they do to pass CS. Whereas, if you're sitting in your own home doing this app privately, it might actually be *more* realistic than sim or standardized patients since it's more "anonymous."

So, what happened with the virtual racial bias study?