Principal Findings
TCM
DISEASES, SYNDROMES, SYNDROME
This study demonstrated that compared with traditional academic training, VSP-TCM significantly improves abilities in medical interviewing, clinical judgment, TCM technology application, and systematic knowledge among TCM students. The VSP-TCM system enabled TCM education to be more efficient and less stressful for teachers. It was also helpful for reforming the course and achieving the goal of training applied talents.IMTCM is a core course that helps students learn how to diagnose and treat patients using TCM technology in the real world [This randomized controlled trial compared the teaching efficacy of VSP-TCM in the PTC-IMTCM course and traditional academic training for 3 months. The findings supported the merits of VSP-TCM; students faced less stress in the simulative clinic, allowing them to devote more time to learning. Through repeated practice within a safe environment, they gradually became familiar with the diagnosis and treatment process, in line with the findings of a previous study [VSP-TCM significantly improved 2 core TCM skills, the ability to collect medical history and the syndrome differentiation and treatment ability. Students’ mastery of the content, logic, and communication skills of inquiry reflected the improvement in their ability to collect medical history. More than 85% of students in the experimental group agreed that VSP-TCM effectively helped them improve their interpersonal communication skills, as opposed to less than 67% in the control group. The real-time evaluation of offline clinical skills from OSPs also indicated that VSP-TCM can significantly improve students’ competence. Given that a solid command of theoretical knowledge guarantees clinical ability, students in the experimental group performed better on the OSKT than the control group, indicating improvement in their theoretical knowledge. This may be attributed to 2 unique advantages of VSP-TCM: repeatability and real-time feedback. Students could better remember the content and logic of medical history collection due to repeatability. In addition, real-time feedback offered students valuable insights into the overall quality of their performance and identified areas that needed further improvement [Overall, the postcourse feedback questionnaire showed that both groups were satisfied with the course. The course had positive teaching efficacy and achieved the teaching objectives. VSP-TCM promoted the development of TCM thinking and critical thinking. It also strengthened students’ clinical skills, self-study ability, and comprehensive ability to help them become qualified future doctors. Interestingly, although VSP-TCM improved students’ clinical skills, they did not have a high confidence level in solving clinical problems. This may be because the students had not yet officially begun their clinical work, which was unfamiliar to them. Furthermore, students believed that VSP-TCM did not significantly improve their medical writing ability, which contradicted our assumption. This may be because VSP-TCM automatically records and displays all operations of students, with easy access to clinical data. Consequently, the students did not develop the awareness and habit of taking notes during medical interviews. This gave us a preliminary idea for improving VSP-TCM. In addition, teachers’ perspectives on the VSP-TCM system indicated that it could be a good teaching tool, which could improve teaching efficacy and partly reduce the teaching pressure on teachers. However, the system should be more consistent with the characteristics of TCM, such as simulating patients with different syndromes instead of diseases.VSP-TCM is cost-effective, which is an outstanding advantage. According to our previous experience, OSP and SSP systems incur substantial costs in terms of human resources and materials [