For a nursing student, understanding a patient’s perspective can be a difficult task especially when managing care for multiple patients. But now, virtual reality programs are offering a new opportunity for simulation-based learning that can help nursing students develop the critical relational skills required in clinical and leadership settings.
“It can be hard to develop and master those unseen skills, like empathy, which are incredibly important as part of our provision of care as nurses,” says Heather Thomson, Director of the undergraduate program at the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and an assistant professor. “With VR, we can enable students to see not only the patient or team’s perspective, but also allow students to practice these skills in a safe space.”
Using simulation scenarios for conflict resolution
In 2023, Thomson received a grant from Bodyswaps a provider of immersive VR simulations that are geared towards the education and healthcare industry. She wanted to evaluate the program’s capabilities for Master of Nursing students in the Health System Leadership & Administration (HSLA) field, and its impact on building their leadership and conflict management skills.
“For students in our Master of Nursing HSLA program, their clinical placements where they might be actively involved in experiential skill development, do not begin until the end of their first year. With VR simulation programs, we can help them build these skills sooner,” says Thomson.
As part of the study published recently in Nurse Educator students evaluated the Bodyswap’s conflict resolution module. One scenario had student’s take on the role of manager and watch a conflict unfold within their team. For students in the Master of Nursing HSLA program, their career trajectory will take them into roles that are executive or managerial making it imperative for them to know how to handle team conflict and people management.
The students were then asked to provide feedback on the conflict as they would in a real-world scenario. In addition to being able to rewatch themselves in action, the VR simulation provided the students with feedback on their performance, noting things like whether they made eye contact, their use of filler words like “umm” or their use or lack thereof, of inclusive language.
Positive feedback from study participants
“I think one of the benefits of using VR in this program is that it can help students build their skills with confidence without feeling the awkwardness of peers and instructors watching, it also gives them the opportunity to try again and repeat the scenario using feedback from the program,” says Thomson.
Though the study was small in size, the student participants provided largely positive feedback about their use of the VR simulation. For Thomson she feels that further improvements are needed before VR based simulation learning can be scaled up as part of regular program curricula.
The study found that students need an introductory to learn how to use VR and acclimatize to the VR headsets and the handheld controllers before they can continue learning in the simulation. There is also the question of accessibility.
“We found that one of the main issues for using VR was accessibility. For participants who wore eyeglasses for example, the size of the headset didn’t always accommodate them, and cybersickness with some participants experiencing dizziness or nausea was also an issue. Then of course, there are the cost constraints of the headsets themselves,” says Thomson.
Despite these drawbacks, the study has highlighted for Thomson that students in the Master of Nursing HSLA program would benefit from VR as part of their learning.
“I think there are many things that are needed to improve student learning in the simulation space, and this study has inspired me to continue working on that,” says Thomson.