Virtual Humans Playing the Role of Patients in Self-medication Consultations: Perspectives of Undergraduate Pharmacy Students

This paper describes an interactive application conceived to improve non-prescription medicines consultation skills in undergraduate Pharmacy students and a user test carried out with two sets of participants. Resorting to virtual humans that play the role of patients and communicate with the students by speech and by facial and body language, the application stimulates students’ engagement in true to life situations in a controllable environment. Two usage modes are available: the training mode, used autonomously by the student, and the assessment mode which is used by the teacher to evaluate the student’s performance. A BackOffice Web application was also implemented to assist teachers’ work. It supports the collection of data about students’ performance, the creation of new self medication situations and their posterior insertion in the application. The overall opinion of the participants in the user-study was quite positive about the usefulness of the application as a tool to improve students’ non-prescription medicines consultation skills. Moreover, some valuable suggestions were gathered during this testing process.