Virtual Reality training offers several significant benefits to healthcare and medical staff training.
First, as research has shown, VR has a very strong and lasting impact on people’s behaviors. By making people see the immediate consequences of correct or incorrect behavior, you create visual and physical memory of actions and reactions.
Virtual Reality training also allows you to prepare people for critical situations without actually putting their patients or themselves in danger. Thus, for example, you can train employees better for identifying and providing the correct critical treatment in accidents or events of multiple casualties.
In addition – Virtual Reality can reduce the cost of healthcare training. It may save travel costs to other locations (e.g. a simulation center), reduce the operational costs of a physical training facilities and equipment, and allow more people to be trained repeatedly and remotely with marginal extra cost.
The fact that actions in Virtual Reality can be recorded and used for reviewing, debriefing and reporting offers new opportunities for healthcare training data analytics and insights.
Obviously, Virtual Reality cannot (and shouldn’t) replace all the training required to prepare the healthcare workforce, but it offers exciting new opportunities with powerful impact & substantial business value.Your first key decision when considering the use of Virtual Reality (or VR) for training healthcare staff should be about choosing the right application for such a project.
While this is true for every training activity, it is especially so when dealing with a new technology and learning methodology that people are less familiar with, and for which you need to prove the ROI in a first project.
By choosing the correct opportunity, you’ll be increasing your chances of success and of demonstrating real impact and value for employees, managers and for the business.
Use the indicative list below identify a good candidate opportunity for healthcare training with VR. It is safe to assume that not all items will match any particlar opportunity, but you should aim to have at least 2 on your list:
- Critical Incident or Key Skill involved
- Costly or complex current solution
- Involves interactions (with humans and/or equipment)
- Requires tracking, certification & reporting (e.g. for Regulatory requirements)
- Is about changing BEHAVIORS!
Now that you have an overview, there are 3 applications to think about:
Use Case 1: Measuring and Diagnosis
Virtual Reality lets you create a scenario which is very close to the actual procedure, and build staff’s ability to perform the measurement correctly, interview patients, and identify the key information in such situations.
It is much more effective than using 2D images, slides or video. It trains them to discover and follow the process in a life-like setting. At the same tine, it is easier to do than live simulations with actors.
Use Case 2: Operating Medical Equipment
Virtual Reality lets you create a scenario which is very close to the actual procedure, and build staff’s ability to perform the measurement correctly, interview patients, and identify the key information in such situations. It can save you the costs of using real equipment and allows drilling staff in unique situations (such as rare illnesses, equipment malfunction).
You can also show how equipment operation is part of the general work flow – interviewing (a virtual) patient, using safety measures, following treatment protocol, using the equipment, etc. In such a case, you are training for the use of the equipment in the context of performance, and not just as a technical task.
Use Case 3: Working in a Medical Team
Many of the medical interventions require coordinated work with other team members. It may be a medical emergency response team arriving at a scene, a team of doctors and nurses performing an operation, or simply work that requires communication and coordination between members.
With VR you may create groups of people who are connecting from remote locations, as well as add more characters with virtual PC controlled avatars. The trainer may also have greater control, tracking and visibility as to the actions of team members.
Now that you’ve got a taste of the possibilities through the selected use cases, WHAT DO YOU THINK about Virtual Reality in healtchare training:
- Does it offer any unique value as compared to other training methods?
- Are there any other use cases you can think of for VR in Healthcare training?
- What should we do to preapre implementing such solutions in healthcare organizations?
