Virtual patient scenarios focused on psychiatric and chronic diseases, with major depressive disorder and cancer most common; acute, infectious, and rare conditions were absent¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Psychiatric diseases were reported in nine of 19 studies (47.4%), with major depressive disorder most common (n = 6); chronic diseases appeared in eight studies (42.1%), with cancer most frequent (n = 4). → Yamada Rie 2025 q2 i? Severe infections, rare diseases, and acute conditions requiring highly invasive interventions were not represented in any scenario. → Yamada Rie 2025

Evidence¶

Yamada Rie 2025¶

Yamada Rie, Futakawa Kaori, Kondo Satoshi, Xu Kuangzhe, Okazaki Satoshi. (2025). A scoping review on the use of virtual patients for enhancing empathy in medical students. Medical Education Online. https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2025.2607825

q2 · i? · review · r3

Review's mapping of clinical scenario characteristics (RQ3, Table 3). The review reports that "Psychiatric diseases were reported in nine of the 19 studies (47.4%)", with major depressive disorder most common, and chronic diseases in eight studies, while acute and infectious conditions were absent.

"Psychiatric diseases were reported in nine of the 19 studies (47.4%), with major depressive disorder being the most common (n = 6) [32,63,68,69,71,72]. Alzheimer’s disease [67], schizophrenia [70], and opioid use disorder [65] were each reported in one study (n = 1). Chronic diseases were identified in eight studies (42.1%)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Five research gaps were identified: lack of explicit empathy definitions, limited scenario diversity, absence of repeated interventions, self-report limitations, and insufficient long-term outcome evidence — related
• Virtual patient simulations were delivered via immersive systems (nine studies) or desktop-based platforms (ten studies), all as single-session interventions — related
• High-fidelity manikins and virtual reality were the most common paediatric SBE modalities across the reviewed studies — related