Virtual cases for developing professional competence regarding domestic violence

“You didn’t show me respect. This meeting did not feel good.”

Good treatment can be decisive for whether a patient or a client dares to talk about their exposure to domestic violence. Therefore, respectful and empathetic treatment and a correct assessment are essential parts of the professional competence of nurses and social workers. Research shows that there is a lack of competence in the practical skills to respond to, assess and act on domestic violence. At the same time, one of the graduation goals for nursing and social work educational programmes is for the student to demonstrate knowledge of domestic violence and men’s violence against women.

The thesis focuses on how interactive computer-based simulations in the form of virtual cases can contribute to the professional competence of nursing and social work students regarding domestic violence and men’s violence against women. Virtual cases are computer-based simulations of encounters with patients/clients. The user meets a virtual patient or client whom they need to investigate or assess based on a background story and reason for the visit. The user chooses from predetermined questions to get closer to an assessment and further planning. The system is interactive, and the virtual patients/clients answer the user’s questions in the form of text or video. Each choice gives a reaction in line with the question asked: the patient/client may, for example, become calm and dare to speak or become sad or upset and leave the meeting. Since the training takes place in a virtual environment, it is safe to make mistakes without any patient/client being at risk of injury. At the end of each virtual case, the user makes suggestions for assessment and planning and then receives feedback from the system.

In this PhD project, virtual cases will be developed together with professional nurses and social workers. The virtual cases will be implemented in the respective education programmes and evaluated via questionnaires and interviews to investigate what they have contributed to developing the student’s professional competence in the field in the short and long term. The research aims to shed light on whether virtual cases can be a way to prepare nursing and social work students for future working life, as well as investigate what significance the use of virtual cases in education has had in the profession after graduation.