Effectiveness and Utility of Virtual Reality Simulation as an Educational Tool for Safe Performance of COVID-19 Diagnostics: Prospective, Randomized Pilot Trial (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Although the proper use of hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE) is paramount for preventing the spread of a disease such as COVID-19, healthcare personnel uses incorrect technique for donning/doffing of PPE and hand hygiene, leading to a large number of infections among health professionals. Education and training is difficult with social distancing restrictions in place, shortage of PPE and testing material and lack of evidence on optimal training. Virtual reality (VR) simulation can offer a multisensory, three-dimensional, fully immersive, and safe training opportunity, which addresses these obstacles. OBJECTIVE Explore the short- and long-term effectiveness of a fully immersive VR simulation vs. a traditional learning method regarding a COVID related skillset and media-specific variables influencing training outcomes. METHODS Prospective randomized controlled pilot study on medical students (n=29, intervention VR training, n=15 vs. control video-based instruction, n=14) to compare performance of hand disinfection, nasopharyngeal swab taking, and donning/doffing of PPE before/after training and one month later as well as variables of media use RESULTS Both groups performed significantly better after training with sustaining the effect over one month. After training, the VR group performed significantly better in taking a nasopharyngeal swab, scoring a median of 14/17 (IQR 13-15) vs. 12/17 (IQR 11-14) in the control, P= .027. With good immersion and tolerability of VR simulation, satisfaction was significantly higher in the VR group compared to control (median of User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire 27/30 (IQR 23-28) vs. 22/30 (IQR 20-24) in the control, P= .011). CONCLUSIONS VR simulation was similarly effective, and partly even more effective than traditional learning methods in training medical students. These results add to the growing body of evidence of VR being a useful tool for acquiring simple and complex clinical skills.

Exploring objective measures for assessing team performance in healthcare: an interview study

“…Moreover, gathering and integrating physiological data with additional devices are also possible, and unlikely to cause significant disruption during routine simulation training. It is worth noting that virtual, augmented, and mixed reality are relatively new in medical education; nevertheless, they are currently used for this purpose, and extensive research exists that attest to their usefulness and effectiveness in various settings (Barteit et al, 2021;Birrenbach et al, 2021). Consequently, the inclusion of various objective parameters in the assessment of these tools in different contexts is the next logical step.…”