Reinventing The Way We Train In Healthcare with Virtual Reality

The healthcare industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies and techniques emerging all the time. It's crucial for healthcare professionals to keep up with these changes. Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a revolutionary technology in recent years, offering unparalleled opportunities to create immersive and engaging user experiences.

While VR has been around for decades, new improvements in technology and software have made it more accessible and cost-effective for organisations to explore VR, particularly in staff training. VR training allows for more immersive and engaging learning experiences, which can lead to better memory recall and retention.?

Strike While the Iron Is Hot

While physical contact and in-person interactions were limited during Covid-19, it has accelerated the adoption of VR approaches to re-create the best of in-person learning. The VR environment transforms the way learning content is delivered by bringing in the experiential learning element; it creates a virtual world and allows learners to see and interact with it with a feedback mechanism to enable learners to apply what they have learnt.

Covid-19 has enabled the adoption of VR approaches to re-create the best of in-person learning by bringing in the experiential learning element.

We have witnessed the Centre for Healthcare Innovation’s (CHI) Kaizen team adopt VR to take learning to the next level in Tan Tock Seng Hospital, from traditional to experiential learning. Its signature 6S training programme was implemented in 2008, equipping staff with basic lean knowledge to increase work processes and environment efficiency. 6S went through the first round of digital transformation in 2020 with the adoption of microlearning and now the addition of immersive virtual training to enable more effective learning.?

The first scenario to start off the VR training series was the Specialist Outpatient Clinic (SOC) blood-taking, where staff would have the VR experience in optimising the blood-taking process and reducing the time taken for patients.?

The hospital plans to launch a few other scenarios, including one focusing on pharmacy medication packing in the next release. The hospital also plans to extend VR to learners within the community to benefit residents and partners, bringing care delivery beyond the hospital.

Overcoming Limitations of Traditional Learning

Not discrediting the foundation that traditional methods of learning have laid and its benefits, why should one explore leveraging VR in learning?

• Cost-effective training: Traditional healthcare training methods can be expensive and time-consuming. VR technology can reduce costs by providing training without expensive equipment or facilities.
• Increased accessibility: VR technology can also increase accessibility to healthcare training for learners in different locations or those unable to attend in-person training sessions.
• Realistic simulations: VR technology can create immersive, realistic simulations of medical procedures, patient interactions, and emergency scenarios. This allows healthcare professionals to gain hands-on experience in a safe, controlled environment without harming patients.
• Repetitive practice: Healthcare professionals can repeatedly use VR simulations to practice procedures and scenarios until they are confident and skilled. This repetitive practice can improve muscle memory and decrease the risk of errors in real-life situations.
• Improved patient outcomes: VR in healthcare training can improve patient outcomes as healthcare professionals become more skilled and confident in their abilities.

Plan, Develop and Evaluate

Implementing effective VR training requires careful planning, development, and evaluation to ensure that it meets the needs of learners and delivers the desired learning outcomes.?

1. Training objectives: The first step is to identify specific training objectives relevant to the learners and aligned with the organisational goals.
2. Choose the right hardware: VR requires specialised hardware like headsets and controllers. Choose the right hardware based on goals, budget, and technical requirements.
3. Support and guidance: Providing support and guidance throughout the training process can help learners to navigate the VR environment and overcome any challenges they may encounter.
4. Content development: The VR content should be developed based on the identified training objectives. It should be interactive and engaging and provide realistic scenarios that learners can relate to. Below are some of the key features for consideration:

• Tutorial: Step-by-step guide on using the controller to interact with the virtual environment and help learners get comfortable using the technology.
• Augmented with visual, voice and text:?Beneficial for learners who have different learning styles.?
• Break into smaller segments:?Learners are less likely to experience cognitive overload and can better focus their attention on the learning. By completing smaller learning segments, learners can see their progress and feel a sense of accomplishment, which can help keep them motivated to continue learning.
• Stop and resume: Allow learners to take breaks and continue learning later, which can help reduce cognitive load, improve retention, provide flexibility, and reduce stress.?

Maximising and Learning from Outcomes

Before rolling out VR to a wider audience, pilot the VR experience with a small group of users. This provides an opportunity to gather feedback and make improvements before scaling up. Incorporating post-VR evaluation is essential to measure the effectiveness of VR training. It can be used to measure the effectiveness of the training.

While VR technology is still relatively new in healthcare training, the potential benefits are clear. By creating immersive and realistic training environments, VR can help to improve patient outcomes, reduce the risk of complications, and improve the overall quality of healthcare. As the technology develops and is widely adopted, do expect to see even more innovative uses of VR in healthcare training.

This article is written by Loo Wei Hann, Manager (Kaizen) at the Centre for Healthcare Innovation’s Transformation Office. He facilitates improvement of projects using lean and design-thinking methodology. He started his career as a programmer and has over 20 years of experience in managing and implementing solutions in various industries.