Development of the competency-based objective resident education using virtual patients system

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires U.S. physician training programs to teach and evaluate their trainees in six core competencies. Developing innovative methods to meet the ACGME requirements is an ongoing area of research in medical education. Here we describe the development of the Competency-based Objective Resident Education using Virtual Patients (CORE-VP) system, a web-based virtual patient simulator to teach and measure the ACGME core competencies. The user interface was built on Wavemaker technology including AJAX and javascript. A Flash component allows graphical navigation of the physical exam and linking of digital images and video to desired anatomic areas. The system contains tools for case authorship, management and execution and permits linking of files or web-based hypermedia content. Each case is designed to mimic a real-life patient encounter and includes history, physical exam, laboratory/ radiology, diagnosis and management. Automa­ted, multi-factorial, evaluation metrics were developed for each ACGME core competency. Upon completion of a case trainees receive immediate feedback in the form of an automated Performance Summary. We have developed a web-based virtual patient simulator called CORE-VP to teach and measure the ACGME core competencies. Work is currently underway to test and validate the system.