Using electronic virtual patients and collaborative groups for problem based learning

TUSM has had a PBL course for decades. New LCME standards for accreditation call out PBL as an important tool in a medical curriculum. First year cases had been paper-based and second year cases have used a complex card-deck trying to simulate the clinical experience. We have now had two years of experience with paperless PBL. Collaborative groups were used for first year PBL and for second year the TUSK electronic virtual patient creator was used to create electronic versions of the card-deck. Transforming the paper cases was a simple task. The virtual patients were more difficult involving rethinking how the cases would work using the rules of the electronic virtual patient authoring tools. Facilitators, who had worked with the program, some for decades are slowly accepting this change. After the first year the virtual patient creator was reworked to make it more appropriate for PBL. The tool within TUSK, Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase, now has more appropriate navigation and tracks the group’s clinical reasoning path and associated costs. We will report on student satisfaction as compared to first year as well as an analysis of clinical paths traveled by the groups and associated costs.