Research project Virtual patient cases for intimate partner violence

Virtual patients are a form of digitally visualized patient cases. They are defined as “interactive computer simulations of real-life clinical scenarios for the purpose of health professions training, education, or assessment”.

In this project, the focus is on intimate partner violence. This is a significant public health issue, with around seven percent of the Swedish population reporting to have been exposed.

Healthcare professionals (for example nurses, advanced practice nurses, physicians and midwifes) have a unique opportunity to prevent and reduce this type of violence through screening and referral. However, accumulated research has demonstrated that health care staff often lacks methods to identify and accurately refer individuals exposed to intimate partner violence.

In this project we investigate the potential of using virtual patient cases to train professionals to discover and manage intimate partner violence. This project is a part of a larger project on intimate partner violence at the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Region Stockholm.

More information on the larger project on Region Stockholm’s website (in Swedish)