At Shadow Health, I design patients for students to interact with. These patients are complete people with extensive backstories and health histories the students may slowly uncover. While a student may not find every bit of story in a patient's backstory, every fact about the patient influences how they interact with the students in the simulation. I am particularly proud of Kyle Reeves and Amber Rhodes, two new patients I had the pleasure of designing and bringing to life.
In addition to patient backstory and dialogue, I also produced instructional text, customer facing copy, and answers and distractors for several questions and educational activities.
Complete backstories
Shadow Health patients have complete histories developed internally; patients may disclose parts of their backstory, or allude to them, in dialogue.
Free response first
Our simulation is designed around accepting free-response input from students as much as possible to best model a conversation with a real person. As a narrative designer, part of my responsibilities was anticipating what types of questions learners would ask, and tailor responses to each question.
Supporting therapeutic discourse
As a narrative designer at Shadow Health, I also work with our experts and psychometricians to determine what information students are scored for uncovering. Asking questions thoughtfully and directly rewards students with information crucial to the rest of the assignment, and with points. Additionally, empathizing with the patient and gently educating them regarding key concepts of their care scores the learner more points.
More than just text
Part of my responsibilities include working with various experts to design activities and "minigames" to simulate nursing tasks and more difficult conversations with patients. Some of what I designed included a conversation about risk management for cystic fibrosis, and an evaluation of a patient's lab values to get hard data on their vital signs.