A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT WARD SIMULATION FOR CLINICAL EDUCATION

The VENICE (Virtual Environments for Nurses in Clinical Education) project is a collaborative partnership between researchers in virtual reality and virtual environment development and teaching staff at the University Hospital, Nottingham UK. We are currently conducting feasibility studies in development and evaluation of three dimensional simulations of clinical environments and tasks as a means for undergraduate student nurses to learn and practise clinical skills. Specifically the aim is to develop a virtual reality hospital ward complete with a range of simulated clinical activities.

Funded by the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Integrative Learning, VENICE aims to investigate the acceptability and usability of a simulated clinical environment as a teaching aid and as a self directed e-learning package. If successful, the project will also aim to develop learning materials that could be used and accessed at the University, in clinical practice or in the student’s home environment.

The simulations will be used to support the ‘Nursing Concepts and Skills for Practice’ Modules presented in the first year of the Diploma/BSc in Nursing, and the ‘Care Delivery and Management’ branch modules which are taught over the subsequent two years. Currently, some students have an opportunity to test their knowledge and understanding of these modules through practical laboratory classes comprising a physical ward simulation in which they perform task scenarios. Unfortunately, due to high numbers of students, it is not possible to facilitate this hands-on teaching method in all nursing training centres and so it is considered that the virtual simulation will provide a novel approach to nurse education that offers a more widely available method of teaching and learning using a clinical simulation. Additional advantages are that, as a self-directed e-learning tool it offers flexibility in time and place in which learning takes place and it also offers a safe environment in which to practise. As a teaching tool it offers the prospect of demonstrating clinical skills and interacting with patients and equipment within the context of an appropriate clinical environment whilst being delivered in a classroom or lecture setting.

A user-centred design approach is being applied to virtual environment development. Teaching staff, together with volunteer nursing students, drawn from five training centres in the Nottinghamshire region, are participating in the design process by evaluating early prototypes and they will also provide feedback throughout the design lifecycle. Two evaluation phases will be conducted: the initial phase will focus on student and teacher views of usability and acceptance of the virtual simulation as a replication of the practical laboratory classes. In the longer term, transfer of clinical skills from simulation to the real world will also be investigated as part of the VENICE project.

The full paper and presentation will describe the first training scenario that has been developed (a ward simulation for understanding infection control), characteristics of the simulation that support the teaching curriculum, feedback from nursing students with regard to usability and acceptance of the simulation as a training tool, and expectations of clinical teaching staff with regard to utility of the tool to support skills transfer of nursing staff from the teaching environment to the real ward situation.