Clinical reasoning (CR) in nursing covers many aspects of problem solving and decision making regarding the well-being and care of patients. CR is seldom a specific topic in nursing curricula and is usually informally trained during clinical rotations. CR in nursing is different from medicine, and besides a different vocabulary, decisions in nursing seldom are focused on medical diagnosis, laboratory/imaging data or therapy, but more on the caring process and well-being of the patient. This has led to problems finding good methods for assessing nursing students’ clinical reasoning skills.

In this study, Virtual patients (VPs) were introduced as an assessment tool for CR in three different nursing courses at two universities comprising 64 students in total. Students’ opinions about this assessment method were investigated using questionnaires regarding students’ acceptance, adaptation to nursing procedures and the potential of the VP-based assessment as a learning experience.

A vast majority of the students reported positive attitudes to the VP-based assessment. Many students thought that the VP cases were well adapted to nursing, but some wanted the VP system to be less “medical” and asked for more focus on nursing. Almost all students identified the VP-based assessment as a good learning experience.