title: Using a virtual patient system for the teaching of pharmaceutical care.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The communication skills of pharmacists are essential for the identification and reduction of patient́s drug related problems. Therefore, Pharmacy courses started the process of teaching Pharmaceutical Care to students in order to improve their communication skills. The use of virtual patients (VP) has been a widely used technique in health care courses, but many of the VP tools in Pharmacy field are in English and do not have clinical cases that are common in tropical countries, such as Brazil. The aim of this work is to describe the PharmaVP system, developed with the purpose of training Latin America students in Pharmaceutical Care. The main differential of PharmaVP is the availability in three languages (Portuguese, English and Spanish) and the possibility of clinical case evolution, simulating several visits made by the patient.
  
  
  METHODS
  The system was developed according to an incremental and interactive methodology, well suited for conducting multidisciplinary projects. Real clinical cases were collected from a Pharmaceutical Care program and added in PharmaVP to simulate the virtual patients. Then, 31 students of a Pharmacy course were trained and invited to participate of the evaluation study. They used the software and answered adapted instruments that assess the students' acceptance of, use of, learning of, and satisfaction with the system.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results showed that the students found the cases realistic and learned significantly using the software. Another positive point is that the application process of PharmaVP did not consume much time.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We can conclude that the virtual patient tool contributed to the development of the skills required for the practice of Pharmaceutical Care, but should be used as complementary technique.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing (DCOMP), Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Menendez
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Teaching and Research in Social Pharmacy (LEPFS), Faculty of Pharmacy, Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Blície
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Balisa-Rocha
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Teaching and Research in Social Pharmacy (LEPFS), Faculty of Pharmacy, Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jabbur-Lopes
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing (DCOMP), Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Wanderson
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing (DCOMP), Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: José Rafael
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Nascimento
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing (DCOMP), Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dósea
authors.affiliation: Department of Computing (DCOMP), Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil. Electronic address: leila@ufs.br.
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Teaching and Research in Social Pharmacy (LEPFS), Faculty of Pharmacy, Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil.
authors.forename: Divaldo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lyra Junior
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001938:Brazil; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000379:methods*; D004512:Education, Pharmacy; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D016544:Patient Simulation; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D010593:Pharmaceutical Services; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D012984:Software; D013339:Students, Pharmacy; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Pharmaceutical care; Virtual patient