Digital Patient for Triage Nurse Training

     The purpose of this project is to offer more

realistic training for nurses working in the triage

unit. The nurse can better acquire and practice

interview and assessment skills essential for

working in triage. The nurse verbally conducts

interview with patient, observes, examines, and

diagnoses. The Digital Patient uses speech

recognition interface with natural language

processing to create more natural conversation

between the Digital Patient and the student nurse.

      The Digital Patient uses a speech recognition interface with natural language processing to interpret input. Symptoms of

the diseases for the digital patient to express are read from a script file, and the Digital Patient itself can be easily altered in

terms of gender, age, and ethnicity to provide a broader training experience for the student. Using Haptek software, the

skin of the Digital Patient can be altered in any way to represent other more physical symptoms of the disease such as

rashes or fatigue. This adds to the flexibility and control for a more uniform experience. An initial usability study was

conducted providing results from experienced in the field nursing students and naive in the field nursing students.

People:

Amy Ulinski, Ph.D. Student

Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Ph.D. Student

Sonya Hardin, Nursing Professor

Larry F. Hodges, Professor

Papers: (click for pdf)

Ziemkiewicz, C., Ulinski, A., Zanbaka, C., Hardin, S., Hodges, L. F. (2005). "Interactive Digital Patient for Triage Nurse Training." First International Conference on Virtual Reality, Las Vegas, Nevada 22 - 27 July.