University of Twente Student Theses
The Role of Simulated Patients in Students’ Transactive Dialogues: A Qualitative Study
Geelkerken, Karlijn (2024) The Role of Simulated Patients in Students’ Transactive Dialogues: A Qualitative Study.
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| Abstract: | Background Simulated Patients (SP) facilitate a setting in which students can improve their medical consultation skills. SPs often give performance feedback and facilitate group discussion between students. To influence the learning outcome positively these group discussions should be highly transactive. Little is known about the link between SP utterances during these group discussions and the level of transactivity in dialogues. This study aims to answer the question: To what extent is there a link between the content of SP feedback and transactive dialogues of students? Methods Transactivity of the dialogues was analysed by taking three analytical steps: (1) categorising the extent of transactive dialogues, by using the by Weinberger and Fischer described characteristics of transactive dialogues; (2) Thematic analysis, as described by Braun and Clarke, to analyse the SPs’ utterances; (3) finding patterns between the extent of transactive dialogues and the SP themes. Results This research showed that of the 120 observed episodes, 36 episodes (33,33%) featured transactive dialogues among students, this was divided over 16 (80%) of the 20 feedback moments with SPs. The thematic analysis of SP utterances showed eleven themes where the theme experience of the patient was represented the most. In transactive episodes, all themes occurred at least once. Some themes were more prevalent in high transactive dialogues, while others were more common in low transactive dialogues. The themes, points of improvement/pitfalls, important/good/tips, explanation case/role, goes along with student1 thoughts, future what if seem to occur more in the high transactive episodes and the themes experience of the patient, contact peers, says nothing, gives turn to and SP off-task are more often coded in low transactive episodes. When these themes are divided into roles and the SP steps out of the SP role this appears most in higher transactive episodes compared to its general occurrence. Discussion Although SPs are trained in giving feedback from the patients perspective, they also give feedback from the expert (teacher) role. It seems that when the SP gives feedback from the expert role, discussions are more often high transactive. Although this is connected to learning, in this case we do not know the content of what the students learn in this is in line with the heuristics. A follow up step is to explore what the students learn in these feedback moments. The presence of a communication skills teacher could counter possible negative effects of SP interventions during group discussions. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology, 81 education, teaching |
| Programme: | Psychology MSc (66604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/98422 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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