The Hong Kong Polytechnic University recently developed a virtual learning system that uses virtual reality technology to enhance nursing education amid the ongoing global pandemic.

PolyU’s virtual hospital learning system is said to offer a “revolutionary experiential approach to nursing education.”

about it

Billed as Hong Kong’s first VR-based learning system, the learning system simulates a real hospital ward. A total of 11 games provide his five learning scenarios: clinical practice orientation, delirium challenges, multitasking management, error prevention, and potential heart attack.

According to the press release, the system has over 1,200 combinations of randomized situations and multiple choices.

The system not only displays student responses and decisions on a television monitor, but also records interactions with virtual patients for review purposes.

In addition, teachers can also use game data and its automated assessments to easily track student progress and assess learning outcomes.

why it matters

The research team behind Virtual Hospital designed a learning system specifically for nursing students.

Dr. Kitty Chan, Senior Teaching Fellow at the PolyU School of Nursing and co-leader of the research team, said most existing VR learning systems “are skill- and procedure-focused and employ a single patient management setting. “There are.”

Through a virtual hospital, students are trained to handle multiple beds and care for multiple patients at the same time. The system also generates unexpected events and clinical pitfalls and tests students’ ability to apply practical knowledge in the midst of chaos and prioritize nursing tasks in a limited amount of time. will do so.

“Through experiential learning in VR, students can develop critical soft skills in clinical practice, such as situational awareness, flexibility in responding to emergencies, decision-making and communication skills,” said Dr. Chan. increase.

Virtual Hospital has served more than 450 nursing students since its launch in January.

Dr. Justina Liu, co-lead researcher and associate professor at the same school of nursing, said the virtual hospital “helps students acquire the skills necessary for clinical nursing and, most importantly, reduce errors in real-world clinical situations.” I look forward to helping you further.”

She shared that in the future she plans to incorporate additional “interprofessional and multidisciplinary elements” into her learning system and bring the virtual hospital to other nursing institutions in the Greater Bay Area.

the bigger trend

Other medical institutions in Asia Pacific are developing VR-based programs to enable uninterrupted training during the pandemic. last year, Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, Japan, has unveiled a cloud-based clinical education platform featuring Jolly Good’s Operation Cloud VR system, which provides a virtual view of live procedures through 360-degree VR cameras.

In Australia, it is used by four tertiary hospitals. Vantari VR’s critical care training platform aimed at reducing training time. The same VR startup launched a new right heart catheter training program on its platform late last year.

of Singapore’s National Institute of Neuroscience and VR medical content platform Kyalio are currently collaborating to develop a neurosurgical training module as part of a joint research effort. They aim to build a library of at least 100 neurosurgical training modules in Kyalio to cover a wide variety of cases.