Co-funded by the European Unionelectronic VirtualPatients

Virtual Patients Survey

An online survey was constructed in SurveyMonkey, a commercial survey and data analysis service. A paper version of the survey was also created for manual distribution and completion at the AMEE 2008 conference in Prague.

The online survey was publicised via the MedBiquitous virtual patient working group mailing list, mededportal list, the UK higher education academy mailing list and through various other local networks across partner countries.
The survey was divided into 5 sections:

1. An introduction describing the purpose of the survey and defining virtual patients.
2. Questions relating to the current use of virtual patients, including educational settings, etc (go to this section)
3. Questions relating to the potential future use of VPs including perceived barriers, curriculum areas best suited to VPs, etc (go to this section)
4. Questions relating to the use of a collection of VPs including some outline business and licensing models. (go to this section)
5. Personal information including country, host institution and well as respondent demographics and contact details. (go to this section)

The survey was first released to the wider community on the 27th of August 2008. As of the 29th of September 2008, a total of 248 survey responses were collected both online and in paper, with 74.6% of respondents answering every question. Data from the paper-based responses were added to the online data, so that all responses could be analysed together.

Due to the successful response rate at such an early stage, the eViP team have agreed to keep this survey open for the time being to ensure as much data is captured in order to assist with our exit and sustainability model (WP6).

A copy of the survey can be seen here and you can download our report on a needs analysis for VPs from wider community (Deliverable 4.3).