Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28794664›Full record

ArticleAdvances in medical education and practice2017

Initial construct validity evidence of a virtual human application for competency assessment in breaking bad news to a cancer patient.

Timothy C Guetterman, Frederick W Kron, Toby C Campbell, Mark W Scerbo, Amy B Zelenski, James F Cleary, Michael D Fetters

Abstract readNews
In one paragraph

Article in Advances in medical education and practice, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Scoping Literature Review of Digital Empathy Games in Healthcare Education and Training.European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe · 2026
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  5. Basics of statistics for primary care research.Family medicine and community health · 2019
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Timothy C GuettermanDepartment of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Frederick W KronDepartment of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Toby C CampbellDepartment of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.
Mark W ScerboDepartment of Psychology, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA.
Amy B ZelenskiDepartment of General Internal Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation.
James F ClearyDepartment of Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Clinical Science Center, Madison, WI, USA.
Michael D FettersDepartment of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundDespite interest in using virtual humans (VHs) for assessing health care communication, evidence of validity is limited. We evaluated the validity of a VH application, MPathic-VR, for assessing performance-based competence in breaking bad news (BBN) to a VH patient.

methodsWe used a two-group quasi-experimental design, with residents participating in a 3-hour seminar on BBN. Group A (n=15) completed the VH simulation before and after the seminar, and Group B (n=12) completed the VH simulation only after the BBN seminar to avoid the possibility that testing alone affected performance. Pre- and postseminar differences for Group A were analyzed with a paired

resultsCompared to the preseminar result, Group A's postseminar scores improved significantly, indicating that the VH program was sensitive to differences in assessing performance-based competence in BBN. Postseminar scores of Group A and Group B were not significantly different, indicating that both groups performed similarly on the VH program.

conclusionImproved pre-post scores demonstrate acquisition of skills in BBN to a VH patient. Pretest sensitization did not appear to influence posttest assessment. These results provide initial construct validity evidence that the VH program is effective for assessing BBN performance-based communication competence.

Indexed as

clinical competenceempathyhealth communicationinformaticsverbal behavior

Identifiers

PMID28794664
PMCPMC5536229

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.