A psychiatric diagnosis involves the physician’s ability to create an empathic interaction with the patient in order to accurately extract symptomatology (i.e., clinical manifestations). Virtual patients (VPs) can be used to train these skills but need to propose a structured and multimodal interaction situation, in order to simulate a realistic psychiatric interview. In this study we present a simulated psychiatric interview with a virtual patient suffering from major depressive disorders. We suggested some design guidelines based on psychiatry theories and medicine education standards. We evaluated our VP with user testing with 35 4th year medical students, and probed their opinion during debriefing interviews. All students showed good abilities to communicate empathetically with the VP, and managed to extract symptomatology from VP’s simulation. Students provided positive feedbacks regarding pedagogic usefulness, realism and enjoyment in the interaction, which suggests that our design guidelines are consistent and that such technologies are acceptable to medical students. To conclude this study is the first to simulate a realistic psychiatric interview and to measure both skills needed by future psychiatrists: symptomatology extraction and empathic communication. Results provide evidence for the use of VPs to complement existing tools and to train and evaluate healthcare professionals in the future.

精神病学诊断涉及医师与患者产生共情互动以准确提取症状（即临床表现）的能力。可以使用虚拟患者（VP）来训练这些技能，但需要提出结构化和多模式的交互情况，以模拟现实的精神病学访谈。在这项研究中，我们对一名患有严重抑郁症的虚拟患者进行了模拟精神病学访谈。我们建议了一些基于精神病学理论和医学教育标准的设计指南。我们通过对35位四年制医学生进行的用户测试来评估了我们的副总裁，并在汇报面试中探究了他们的意见。所有学生都表现出与VP善解人意交流的能力，并设法从VP的模拟中提取症状。学生对互动中的教学有用性，现实性和乐趣提供了积极的反馈，这表明我们的设计指南是一致的，并且这些技术对于医学生是可以接受的。得出结论，这项研究是首次模拟现实的精神病学访谈并衡量未来精神病医生所需的两种技能：症状学提取和共情交流。结果为使用VP补充现有工具以及将来培训和评估医疗保健专业人员提供了证据。得出结论，这项研究是首次模拟现实的精神病学访谈并衡量未来精神病医生所需的两种技能：症状学提取和共情交流。结果为使用VP补充现有工具以及将来培训和评估医疗保健专业人员提供了证据。得出结论，这项研究是首次模拟现实的精神病学访谈并衡量未来精神病医生所需的两种技能：症状学提取和共情交流。结果为使用VP补充现有工具以及将来培训和评估医疗保健专业人员提供了证据。