Experiences in Using Immersive Virtual Characters to Educate Medical Communication Skills

Abstract

This paper presents a system which allows medical students to experience the interaction between a patient and a medical doctor using natural methods of interaction with a high level of immersion. We also present our experiences with a pilot group of medical and physician assistant students at various levels of training. They interacted with projector-based life-sized virtual characters using gestures and speech. We believe that natural interaction and a high level of immersion facilitates the education of communication skills. We present the system details as well as the participants' performance and opinions. The study confirmed that the level of immersion contributed significantly to the experience, and participants reported that the system is a powerful tool for teaching and training. Applying the system to formal communication skills evaluation and further scenario development will be the focus of future research and refinement.

Virtual Human + Tangible Interface = Mixed Reality Human An Initial Exploration with a Virtual Breast Exam Patient

“…', 'I really wanted to be able to see my hands') and 2) more realistic appearance and movement of the patient's breasts. Although these are partially due to the nature of the physical exam, we believe that participants' increased desire for visual fidelity (over earlier VH patient studies [15,16,17]) is driven by an increase in participants' scrutiny of the system once touch is afforded.…”

“…We have developed a VH experience, the VOSCE (Virtual OSCE), which simulates the OSCE by allowing students to conduct a medical interview of a VH patient [15]. Users interact with the VH patient through natural speech and gestures.…”

“…When interacting with a human patient, interpersonal touch is critical for allowing the healthcare professional to develop rapport and express empathy [7,10,11]. Previous user studies in the VOSCE revealed that healthcare professionals had difficulty building rapport with the VH patient due to the lack of interpersonal touch [15].…”

“…Virtual human (VH) experiences are increasingly being used for training real-human interpersonal scenarios, for example, military leadership [13] and doctor-patient interviews [15]. These human-VH interactions simulate a human-human interaction by providing two-way verbal and gestural communication.…”

“…These human-VH interactions simulate a human-human interaction by providing two-way verbal and gestural communication. Prior research using these systems has shown that the efficacy of a VH experience would be significantly enhanced by integrating the haptic component of interpersonal communication [15]. This would, in effect, increase the bandwidth of human-VH communication.…”