title: A qualitative analysis of virtual patient descriptions in healthcare education based on a systematic literature review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Virtual Patients (VPs) have been in the focus of research in healthcare education for many years. The aim of our study was to analyze how virtual patients are described in the healthcare education literature, and how the identified concepts relate to each other.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a literature review and extracted 185 descriptions of virtual patients from the articles. In a qualitative content analysis approach we inductively-deductively developed categories and deducted subcategories. We constructed a concept map to illustrate these concepts and their interrelations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We developed the following five main categories: Patient, Teacher, Virtual Patient, Curriculum, and Learner. The concept map includes these categories and highlights aspects such as the under-valued role of patients in shaping their virtual representation and opposing concepts, such as standardization of learner activity versus learner-centeredness.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The presented concept map synthesizes VP descriptions and serves as a basis for both, VP use and discussions of research topics related to virtual patients.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Education, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Ziemssenstr. 1, München, 80336, Germany. inga.hege@med.uni-muenchen.|Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, USA. inga.hege@med.uni-muenchen.
authors.forename: Inga
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Hege
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics and Telemedicine, Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.|Department of Learning, Informatics Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Andrzej A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Kononowicz
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Education, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Ziemssenstr. 1, München, 80336, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tolks
authors.affiliation: Department of Learning, Informatics Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.|Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Edelbring
authors.affiliation: Institute for Ethics, History and Theory of Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany.
authors.forename: Katja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kuehlmeyer
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical; D006801:Humans; D016544:Patient Simulation; D066230:Patient-Specific Modeling
keywords: Concept mapping; Qualitative content analysis; Virtual patients