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If in an educational institution, connect with your department head, the comptroller, Dean of the department or the school and show examples of what VRpatients is, and how it will not only help you produce a more rounded student, but to use the system to help attract interested students. Most importantly, find out what the budgeting cycle is at your school, and discuss grant opportunities with the person responsible for working with grants.
In fire and EMS agencies, discuss the ease of use with department heads. Look at how you train your team now and how it could be enhanced by offering real-world cases to keep your teams fresh in their knowledge. Work with your HR department to enhance your hiring practices. Medics who can perform well in VRpatients’ cases have proven they not only possess the knowledge, but also the capability to perform well in the real world.
Because there are so many different LMS systems, VRpatients provides information to be downloaded two ways: into a PDF, or by downloading to a .CSV file (spreadsheet). From the .CSV file, information can be uploaded into most LMS systems.
All of the VRpatients authoring tool features are available to administrators, but they don’t have to use ones they don’t want or need to access.
This depends on the instructor. In most cases, instructors assign a few respiratory cases to students or medics after completing a training module on the respiratory system. The same applies to other training modules. Cases can be developed to match an instructor’s curriculum. Running relevant cases following a training section ensures students or medics have not only learned the lesson, but are now able to perform under pressure.
VRpatient statistics show that the vast majority of users at least make edits to the case templates that are provided with the program. This keeps cases fresh, and helps prevent students or medics from learning the case through repetition after a couple of times through. Interviews with customers also show that as instructors become comfortable with editing cases, they inevitably start building their own cases from scratch.
This varies greatly depending on the complexity of the case. For example, a case featuring a patient with a stomach ache may take only minutes to construct from scratch. A case featuring an unconscious patient with arrhythmias may take an hour or two, or perhaps even more than that. The beauty is you are free to develop what you want, rather than just be given a case to run that never changes.
For the most part, the case authoring tool is simple. The only aspect of it that may require some practice is manipulating case logic. Case logic allows the author to control all aspects of the case, from how the patient reacts to various actions to what it takes to “win” the case. VRpatients offers a free “VRpatients University” to help users get the most out of their case building. After a bit of practice, users rapidly acclimate to the building of case logic strings.
You can place people into real situations and see how they react, you can walk students through technical and complicated procedures and protocols to gain practice, and you can use it for safety training, posing dangerous situations with real consequences and risks. I know one agency that uses VRpatients as a pre-hire screen, ensuring clinical competency of new hires before agreeing to hire them.
Virtual reality allows students to engage multiple senses in a three-dimensional computer-generated environment. In the case of medical simulation, it raises your blood pressure and makes you think. It gives you a more real-life experience than sitting there looking at something that’s 2D. It speaks to the dizziness that some people get when they experience virtual reality the first few times. Their senses aren’t ready for it. Basically, it brings a simulated environment to life so students don’t just see something, but also experience it. As EMS students come out of their classes, there needs to be a lot of patient contact before those new medics really gain some expertise at their job. I think that with virtual reality, you can experience more patients more often and therefore feel more prepared because you’ve seen all this stuff and you’ve done all this stuff in virtual reality. I just think that it better prepares somebody to face the realism of being in the field and seeing a real patient.
The good news is that you probably already have everything you need to run VRpatients! There is absolutely no need for anything other than a computer to log into the main program and WiFi. Since cases can be run on a computer remotely, you don’t even need to have a VR headset. Of course, VR headsets offer the ultimate experience with VRpatients, and there are a number of them that are compatible with the program. Ideally, you’ll want roughly a 12’ x 12’ area to give users space to move around the case environment, but that’s it!
You may also check out our blog, “4 Things I learned Building an Immersive Virtual Reality Lab for Nursing Education.” https://vrpatients.com/4-things-i-learned-building-an-immersive-virtual-reality-lab-for-nursing-education/
