Congratulations to Michael Zychowicz, professor, for the award of his application to the Duke Learning Innovation: Carry the Innovation Forward Program. The proposal titled "Virtual Reality Health Professionals Skills Trainer" was funded for one year with a proposed start date of June 2021.

Health professional student education includes learning hands-on clinical skills which are typically taught in a face-to-face environment in their schools’ skills labs. These are skills such as suturing, giving injections or applying a splint to an injured limb. These skills are frequently taught in congregate settings with close faculty oversight and many students near each other. Additionally, with many graduate nursing programs being delivered in a distance-based format, there is usually a need to travel to campus for several days of immersion time each semester to engage in psychomotor skills training and practice.

The use of virtual reality (VR) headsets has been growing steadily for gaming, entertainment, as well as industry simulation activities. Using VR is different from other computer-based trainers in that the participants do not just point and click with their mouse to make something happen, they must use handheld controllers to pick up and manipulate virtual objects in a virtual space that they see through a head mounted display. Using VR, students can immerse themselves into a virtual patient exam room and interact with a patient avatar to perform tasks and skills. The use of VR task trainers by health professional students has the potential to allow students to learn and practice simulated clinical skills anywhere and anytime. For distance-based students, they would have the opportunity to practice psychomotor skills between the times they come to campus to use the skills labs. The potential for VR task trainers became more relevant and apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic when travel restrictions were put in place and it was unsafe to teach large groups of students in congregate settings.

This funded project builds upon VR task trainer development Zychowicz has engaged in over the past few years. The goals of this project are to 1) finalize a usable health professional virtual reality task trainer which can give students the ability to practice selected skills anywhere and at any time and 2) test the usability of this VR task trainer as a health professions educational modality. Ultimately, this type of product has the potential to 1) reduce the need and expense for distance-based students to travel to campus for skills training, 2) provide access to task trainers for student learning and practice anywhere at any time, and 3) reduce a school’s expenditure for physical lab space and expensive simulation equipment.