ArticleAdvances in medicine2018
Evaluating the Difference between Virtual and Paper-Based Clinical Cases in Family Medicine Undergraduate Education.
Article in Advances in medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Virtual patients versus standardized patients for improving clinical reasoning skills in ophthalmology residents. A randomized controlled trial.BMC medical education · 2024Trial
- Enhancing Self-Care Consultation Skills in Pharmacy Education: Benefits of Virtual Patients and Artificial Intelligence-A Scoping Review.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Student and educator perspectives on clinical reasoning: A qualitative study.The South African journal of physiotherapy · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionA "virtual patient" is defined as a computer program which simulates real patients' cases. The aim of this study was to determine whether the inclusion of virtual patients affects the level of factual knowledge of family medicine students at the undergraduate level.
methodsThis was a case-controlled prospective study. The students were randomly divided into experimental (EG:
resultsThere were no statistically significant differences in the groups' initial knowledge. At the final assessment of knowledge, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups, but there was a statistically significant difference between their initial and final knowledge.
conclusionsThe study showed that adding virtual patient cases to the curriculum, instead of paper clinical cases, did not affect the level of factual knowledge about family medicine. Virtual patients can be used, but a significant educational outcome is not expected.
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Registered trials
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.