The purpose of the research project is to evaluate an educational module with a virtual patient, focusing intimate partner violence. The project is carried out in collaboration between the Center for Psychiatry Research in Stockholm (Region Stockholm and Karolinska Institutet) and The Department of Health Sciences, University of Skövde.

Previous research indicates that interactive educational modules with virtual patients (VPs) can increase the user's clinical decision-making and critical thinking skills.

A national graduation goal for healthcare students is knowledge about intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence involves the violation of a person’s human rights and includes physical, psychological, financial and sexual violence as well as honour-related violence.

Research shows a strong connection between intimate partner violence and illness. Persons who live with intimate partner violence often seek care, but rarely state it as a reason for visiting care. At the same time, healthcare professionals may experience it as difficult to ask clinically relevant questions that identify intimate partner violence.

Previous research indicates that interactive educational modules with virtual patients (VPs) can increase the user's clinical decision-making and critical thinking skills. This research project is based on an interactive educational module with a VP focusing on intimate partner violence, developed by an interdisciplinary research group with project leaders from the Center for Psychiatry Research (CPF) in Stockholm.

In collaboration with the University of Skövde, the VP educational module is evaluated via studies with undergraduate nursing students at the University of Skövde. The educational module consists of three parts:

1. an interactive web module consisting of four chapters that takes about 2.5 hours to complete and contains questions for a knowledge test.
   
   
2. a VP founded in Virtual Case System (VCS), where the user logs on to a digital platform via the internet, and gets to meet the fictitious patient Sarah, who has sought care at a psychiatric outpatient clinic.
   
   On the interactive platform, the user can access background information about the patient, via the headings "patient info" and “assessment scales”, for example, a referral from the healthcare centre.
   
   Under the heading "patient conversation", the user can choose from a large number of predefined questions to ask the VP, who then answers via a video sequence.
   
   The tree-branched dialogue conversation is structured based on questions that are graded on a scale from less appropriate to recommended questions. The choices of these questions control the feedback the user receives, both from the VP and experts in the last part of the platform. This feedback applies, for example, to treatment, trust and the structure of the conversation.
   
   
3. a subsequent teacher-led dialogue seminar