Learning Diagnostic Skills Online (German: Diagnostik Skills Online Lernen)
Trial Snapshot
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Status
- Completed
- Sponsor
- Enrollment
- 350
- Locations
- 6
- Primary Endpoint
- Behavioral Measure: Performance in a structured interview
Study Overview
Brief Summary
Clinical psychologists give diagnoses to their patients everyday and these diagnoses determine if and how these patients will be treated. Misdiagnoses can have severely adverse effects. Therefore, teaching diagnostic skills to clinical psychologists is very important during their undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate training.
One major problem in teaching diagnostics is that there are too few opportunities to practice with real patients due to legal and ethical restrictions. The aim of the DiSkO-project is, therefore, the development and evaluation of a blended learning course to teach diagnostic skills to (future) clinical psychologists.
In order to make the diagnostic training more practical a series of video files of simulated diagnostic interviews will be presented in an online course. These video files will be divided in different segments and presented with questions and automatic feedback. In a second step, learners will make a transfer to a real face-to-face diagnostic situation with an actor simulating a patient.
The DiSkO- course will be evaluated in a randomized-controlled trial at three universities in Germany (Ruhr-University of Bochum, Philipps University of Marburg, University of Cologne). To test whether students are equally good in administering a diagnostic interview after taking the DiSkO-course compared to students who took part in a traditional face-to-face university course a noninferiority-analysis will be conducted. Furthermore, diagnostic knowledge and attitudes toward evidence-based assessment after taking part in DiSkO vs. the face-to-face course will be compared.
The investigators aim at disseminating the open source DiSkO-course to other universities or institutions of tertiary education in Germany with the aim of improving the diagnostic training for students, better prepare them for their clinical practice and thus improve patients' health care in Germany.
Study Design
- Study Type
- Interventional
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Intervention Model
- Parallel
- Primary Purpose
- Other
- Masking
- Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility Criteria
- Ages
- 18 Years to — (Adult, Older Adult)
- Sex
- All
- Accepts Healthy Volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria
- •Psychology bachelor students of a cooperating university (Ruhr-University of Bochum, University of Cologne, Philipps-University of Marburg)
Exclusion Criteria
- •previous participation in a diagnostic seminar
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Behavioral Measure: Performance in a structured interview
Time Frame: 13 weeks
Conducting a 15 minute section of a structured interview with a patient played by an actor. This interview is videotaped and then rated by independent evaluators regarding e.g. rules of correct implementation and clincial interviewing skills.
Secondary Outcomes
- Knowledge Test B(14 weeks)
- Münster Questionnaire for the Evaluation of Seminars - revised (MFE-Sr; Thielsch & Hirschfeld, 2010)(14 weeks)
- Visual Aesthetics of Websites Inventory - Short (VisAWI-S; Moshagen & Thielsch, 2013)(14 weeks)
- Knowledge Test A(1 week)
- Acceptance of structured interviews questionnaire (Bruchmüller et al., 2011)(14 weeks)
- Usability Metric for User Experience - Lite (UMUX-Lite; Lewis et al., 2013)(14 weeks)
- Overall impression(14 weeks)
- Website-Clarity, Likeability, Informativeness, and Credibility (Web-CLIC; Thielsch & Hirschfeld, 2019)(14 weeks)
- Brief scale for teaching evaluation (Zumbach, Spinath, Schahn, Friedrich & Kögel, 2007)(14 weeks)
Investigators
Ruth von Brachel
Principal Investigator
Ruhr University of Bochum