An interactive patient simulation for the study of medical decision-making

Abstract

An interactive patient simulation for the study of medical decision-making was developed which is basically a flexible question and answer simulation between a doctor and a simulator conducting the simulation. To insure a thorough insight into the management of cases over time, provisions were made for doctors to interact with the simulated patients as many as five times. The simulation was tested on 16 family doctors and 16 specialist physicians to evaluate its realism and construct validity. The realism scores were highly favourable for both groups. With regard to construct validity, the hypothesis that the two specialty groups would manifest themselves in decision-making as distinct and homogeneous groups was tested. This hypothesis was confirmed in the case of specialist physicians, but not in the case of family doctors.