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The Deteriorating Patient (DP) role play as an interactive, contextualized extension of medical PBL addressing its text-based, decontextualized, cognition-only limitations

Design · All designs
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description

The DP role play is a medical simulation in which students collaboratively manage a deteriorating patient by playing on-call student, junior resident, and senior resident roles, while the teacher plays the duty nurse and the patient. It retains PBL's hypothesize-and-test structure but, per the article, "instead of reading about a case, the students are role-playing a case." It was created to address Hoffmann and Ritchie's three PBL limitations by providing "an interactive, contextualized environment, where both cognitive and affective considerations are met." Student questioning is guided by the ABCDEF emergency algorithm and by nurse feedback on vital signs and labs.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

  • Students take differentiated roles (on-call student, junior and senior residents) with the teacher simulating the patient and duty nurse
  • Scenarios simulate emergencies students will encounter in hospital wards and emergency rooms

Constraints

  • Originally only about half the students in a class could participate in each one-hour role play due to time limitations; this case study added small-group collaboration to include all students

Target Learners

  • third-year medical students in internal medicine

Learning Goals

  • emergency decision making under deteriorating conditions
  • collaborative problem solving
  • managing anxiety and communication with patients

Claims

Examples

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Key Sources

  • Lu, J., Lajoie, S. P., & Wiseman, J. (2010). Scaffolding problem-based learning with CSCL tools. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 5, 283–298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-010-9092-6
Page metadata
Field Value
type design
id dp-role-play-pbl-extension
title The Deteriorating Patient (DP) role play as an interactive, contextualized extension of medical PBL addressing its text-based, decontextualized, cognition-only limitations
description The DP role play is a medical simulation in which students collaboratively manage a deteriorating patient by playing on-call student, junior resident, and senior resident roles, while the teacher plays the duty nurse...
status review
generated by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-18
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — lu-2010

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