Abstract:

The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a tool for evaluating the clinical skills of academics in the health area, measuring the level of development of their skills as future professionals. When associated with Virtual Reality (VR), the use of OSCE with scenarios and 3D objects, enables training and a more realistic assessment of these skills, being an effective method for improving teaching in health science courses. The objective of the research was to carry out a survey on the use of virtual reality with students in the health field. This is a descriptive exploratory, cross-sectional study, carried out with students from the nursing, dentistry and medicine courses at the State University of Amazonas (UEA) through a self-administered and anonymous questionnaire.

The instrument was structured on the Google Forms® platform, divided into three objective sections:
1) Presentation and acceptance of the Informed Consent Form;
2) Profile of the participant's sample (gender, course, period, admission and age);
3) About the Objective and Structured Clinical Examination - OSCE (knowledge about OSCE, application of OSCE, OSCE as an evaluative methodology, OSCE in VR, use of OSCE in disciplines, OSCE and VR for clinical skills of academics, training in the use of OSCE in RV platform). The collected data were tabulated in Microsoft® Excel® (version 2101) and analyzed using the Epi Info™ software (version 7.2) and fixed with a significance level of 5% in the statistical tests.

Data were analyzed by the variables present in each section of the form. The present work was submitted to the Research Ethics Committee of the UEA and approved in February 2021 under Opinion No. 4,525,489. 160 students from courses in the health area were approached. Of these, 54 (33.7%) were students from the nursing course, 71 (44.4%) from medicine and 35 (21.9%) from the dentistry course. As for the characterization of the participating students, there is a slight predominance of males (49.3%) for the medical course and females (52.9%) for the nursing course. The prevalent age group for participants was 20 to 29 years (94.4%). There is also an imbalance in the course period with less expressive participation in the ninth and tenth periods. As for the origin of students, there was a superiority between medical students from the capital and nursing students from the interior of the state of Amazonas. Although 98 (61.3%) of the students knew about the OSCE, less than half 68 (42.5%) reported having already done it. When asked whether they considered the OSCE to be an effective methodology to assess their clinical skills, 151 (94.4%) said yes. Conversely, the vast majority 142 (88.8%) had never heard of the OSCE in virtual reality, referring to the desire to participate.

Keywords:

Virtual Reality, Technology in health, active leaarning, Simulation.