Integration of GenAI-simulated patient pedagogy in tutorials to facilitate first-year occupational therapy students’ learning

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), used as simulated patients, is an emerging pedagogy for enhancing clinical skills in health professions education. This approach was integrated into the author’s tutorials to facilitate first-year occupational therapy students’ learning and to explore their engagement and satisfaction. A stroke case with minimal background information and three treatment notes was created and input into ChatGPT-4o. Students interacted with the GenAI-simulated patient to gather information, conduct assessments, and explain interventions sequentially across three tutorials. Qualitative analysis of the chat records demonstrated signs of students’ learning through these interactions. The learning gains included real-time adaptations of communication strategies and occupation-based reasoning. Of the 94 students, 30 indicated that the tutorials strongly facilitated their active learning (mean = 4.6). These findings suggest that integrating a GenAI-simulated case in tutorials is a promoting strategy for rehabilitation education, even for students with limited clinical experience.