Learning Diagnostic Skills Online (German: Diagnostik Skills Online Lernen) (DiSkO)

Ruhr University of Bochum

Status: Completed

Conditions: Diagnosis, Psychiatric

Treatments: Behavioral: blended learning; Behavioral: teaching format as usual

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05294094

16DHB3010

Details and patient eligibility

About

Clinical psychologists give diagnoses to their patients everyday and these diagnoses determine if and how these patients will be treated. Misdiagnoses can have severely adverse effects. Therefore, teaching diagnostic skills to clinical psychologists is very important during their undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate training.

One major problem in teaching diagnostics is that there are too few opportunities to practice with real patients due to legal and ethical restrictions. The aim of the DiSkO-project is, therefore, the development and evaluation of a blended learning course to teach diagnostic skills to (future) clinical psychologists.

In order to make the diagnostic training more practical a series of video files of simulated diagnostic interviews will be presented in an online course. These video files will be divided in different segments and presented with questions and automatic feedback. In a second step, learners will make a transfer to a real face-to-face diagnostic situation with an actor simulating a patient.

The DiSkO- course will be evaluated in a randomized-controlled trial at three universities in Germany (Ruhr-University of Bochum, Philipps University of Marburg, University of Cologne). To test whether students are equally good in administering a diagnostic interview after taking the DiSkO-course compared to students who took part in a traditional face-to-face university course a noninferiority-analysis will be conducted. Furthermore, diagnostic knowledge and attitudes toward evidence-based assessment after taking part in DiSkO vs. the face-to-face course will be compared.

The investigators aim at disseminating the open source DiSkO-course to other universities or institutions of tertiary education in Germany with the aim of improving the diagnostic training for students, better prepare them for their clinical practice and thus improve patients' health care in Germany.

Enrollment: 350 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Psychology bachelor students of a cooperating university (Ruhr-University of Bochum, University of Cologne, Philipps-University of Marburg)

Exclusion criteria

• previous participation in a diagnostic seminar

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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350 participants in 2 patient groups

intervention group

Experimental group

Description:

blended learning

Treatment:

Behavioral: blended learning

control group

Active Comparator group

Description:

Teaching format as usual

Treatment:

Behavioral: teaching format as usual