Abstract:

Introduction:
University of Barcelona together with Donation and Transplantation Institute offer since 2004 a Master degree in Donation and Transplantation. Since 2011, the program had a blended modular structure including: Donation, Transplantation, Management, Tissue Banking & Advanced Therapies, and Internship (IS). IS has been traditionally designed to be face-to-face in any of the associated hospitals located in Europe or United States of America.
In 2020, due to COVID-19, the program was adapted to be fully online including the IS module. Since then, the IS syllabus includes recorded clinical sessions, webinars with hospital’s staff, forum discussions, and a virtual reality (VR) visit (Transplant procurement management (TPM) Journey VR) to a third level hospital that applies the Spanish model of Donation. The TPM Journey VR was developed in collaboration with Immersium Studio. The aim is to describe this new VR tool and present the first results related to the grades and the student’s satisfaction in the IS module.

Methods:
The visit is a VR learning experience created to satisfy the need of providing a global overview on donation and transplantation programs. The user visits the units in the hospital involved in the process: the transplant coordinator office, the ICU, the immunology laboratory, the different solid organs transplant units, the tissue donation centre, and the medical direction office. Thus, the TPM Journey VR contains medical, technical, organizational, legal, and financial aspects.
Evaluation of participants is done by the resolution of clinical cases that arise during the visit. So, the experience has immersive interaction, evaluation, and monitoring methods.
To sum up, it provides clear understanding of the organisation of the Spanish model and the role of the transplant procurement manager and their interaction with other linked services and professionals. The user will be able to ask questions about their job and can run through it again by changing their previous decisions and comparing the different consequences.
Data are divided in 2 periods according to the modality of the course: face-to-face-IS (2016-2019) and VR-IS (2020-2021). Grades and students‘ satisfaction were evaluated upon a 10 points scale.
Grades in the face-to-face-IS were obtained through a questionnaire by tutors (including assistance and attitude) and in VR-IS through tests included in the VR experience and assistance to webinars. Answers to clinical cases during VR experience was also evaluated specifically. Satisfaction in face-to-face-IS measured hospital visit and organization, and VR-IS included webinars and VR experience.

Results:
In face-to-face-IS the average grades were 9.5±0.6 (n=18) in 2016-17, 9.5±0.9 (n=17) in 2017-18, 8.9±1.5 (n=27) in 2018-19, 9.7±0.4 (n=7) in 2019-20 and in VR-IS average grade was 8.41±1 (n=15). Specifically, VR experience average grades were 7.5/10±0.6.
In face-to-face-IS the average student’s satisfaction score was 8.14±3.0 (n=9) in 2016-17, 9.3±1.3 (n=12) in 2017-18, 9.1±1.7 (n=14) in 2018-19, 9.0±1.1 (n=4) in 2019-20, and in VR-IS the score was 9.2±1.4 (n=15).

Conclusions:
New digital tools such as VR allow us to provide more individualized and realistic experiences. The inclusion of new technologies has been essential to keep offering high quality international educational programs. Further exploring of technologies may also improve efficiency.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, internship, master, donation, transplantation.