Clinical trial NCT05294094: Learning Diagnostic Skills Online (German: Diagnostik Skills Online Lernen)
Official title: Learning Diagnostic Skills Online (German: Diagnostik Skills Online Lernen)
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Diagnosis, Psychiatric
Keywords: clinical interview
blended learning
diagnostic interview
Lead sponsor: Ruhr University of Bochum
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: University of Cologne
name: University of Kaiserslautern-Landau
name: Philipps Universität Marburg
First posted: 2022-03-24
Enrollment: 350
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: intervention group vs. control group
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: 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.


Eligibility criteria: 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

Primary outcomes:
measure: Behavioral Measure: Performance in a structured interview
timeFrame: 13 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Knowledge Test A
timeFrame: 1 week
measure: Knowledge Test B
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Münster Questionnaire for the Evaluation of Seminars - revised (MFE-Sr; Thielsch & Hirschfeld, 2010)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Website-Clarity, Likeability, Informativeness, and Credibility (Web-CLIC; Thielsch & Hirschfeld, 2019)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Brief scale for teaching evaluation (Zumbach, Spinath, Schahn, Friedrich & Kögel, 2007)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Usability Metric for User Experience - Lite (UMUX-Lite; Lewis et al., 2013)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Visual Aesthetics of Websites Inventory - Short (VisAWI-S; Moshagen & Thielsch, 2013)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Overall impression
timeFrame: 14 weeks
measure: Acceptance of structured interviews questionnaire (Bruchmüller et al., 2011)
timeFrame: 14 weeks
Other outcomes:
measure: Lesson evaluation
timeFrame: After each lesson during the intervention (during week 8-10)
Locations:
city: Marburg
country: Germany
facility: Philipps University of Marburg
state: Hesse
city: Bochum
country: Germany
facility: Ruhr-University Bochum
state: North Rhine-westphalia
city: Cologne
country: Germany
facility: University of Cologne
state: North Rhine-westphalia
Study officials:
affiliation: Ruhr-University Bochum
name: Ruth E von Brachel, Dr.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: