Visakhapatnam :
In an interesting development related to studies in mental health, virtual patients in psychiatry has been shaped as a new tool for teaching medical students as well as training MBBS doctors who are sent to serve in primary health centres.
City-based doctor and professor of psychiatry Dr C Radhakant has developed this innovative teaching technique through creation of virtual patients using computer graphics. The patients have typical characteristics of schizophrenia and mania and can be used as a teaching tool for identification and understanding of the symptoms and behaviour of such patients. This concept would be useful in training PHC doctors under national mental health programmes as well as medicos in psychiatry in medical colleges.
The research paper ‘Virtual Patients in Psychiatry – Mania and Schizophrenia,’ was published in the International Organization of Scientific Research (IOSR) Journal of Dental and Medical Sciences about a week ago. This study, using computer graphics- based virtual patients of mania and schizophrenia, is the first of its kind in psychiatry in India. Even across the world, there are just a couple of studies on the use of Virtual patients in Psychiatry for post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar suicidal patient.
Speaking about the methodology and his creation of the virtual characters, Dr Radhakanth said, “It took me several weeks. Characters created on Poser software were imported into 3d studio max software and animated, created into scenes with backgrounds and merging videos, rendered with lighting. Variables into .avi files were then laid out on a video editor software and music track was added. The product is of DVD quality which can be seen on computer, TV or multimedia projector.”
As per the research paper, in Psychiatry, virtual patients instead of live patients offer many advantages in cases of violence, suicide, complex phenomenology and where typical cases are fewer. Virtual patients have been used to teach clinical interviewing skills, bioethics, basic patient communication, history taking and clinical decision-making skills for medical students. Virtual patients offer many advantages to medical schools including: efficiency, standardization, easy accessibility, interactivity, decreased instructor workload, exposure to rare but critical cases, personalized learning, immediate and personalized instruction and feedback, efficacy, improvement of clinical skills in a non-threatening experimental environment.
Computer animation and graphics also have clear cut advantages. The idea is to develop universal norms irrespective of socio economic backgrounds, ethnic or language or regional issues especially in mania and schizophrenia, which were shown to have more or less similar manifestations and prevalence across the world. Hence these two conditions were chosen for exploring virtual patients as a teaching tool.
Of the virtual patients, manic patient called Ravi was portrayed as a fairly well-built young man who is dynamic, hyperactive, elated, confident, brash young man who is shown trying to show his prowess by taming a wild horse to ride but ultimately falling, racing by running against a Formula One racing car, displaying a style of walking and sitting grandiosely and sporting a smile when taking up challenges and showing irritability when failing in them. His lack of judgement is shown in scenes like trying to jump over a racing car and fighting with the horse.
“The study aims to study the feasibility of using computer graphics-based virtual patients as a teaching tool for medical students posted to psychiatry, to evaluate the duration of exposure to basics of psychiatry theory before exposure to virtual patients and to assess the predominantly visual models vis a vis the heavily verbalized mode of psychiatric diagnostic procedures,” averred Dr Radhakanth.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Visakhapatnam News / by Sulogna Mehta / TNN / December 13th, 2016