RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Virtual reality is used to an increasing extent in various fields and is now making inroads into health and social education. Virtual reality simulation can provide a safe and controlled environment for students to practice and master skills that are transferable to real-world situations without putting patients, clients, or themselves at risk of any harm. Virtual reality simulation using 360° videos represents a novel approach to simulation in health care and social work education, and this inspired our interest in exploring students' experiences with such a learning activity. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore occupational therapy, social education, nursing, and social work students' experiences with virtual reality simulation as a learning activity in an interdisciplinary subject. METHODS: The data were collected through 6 semistructured focus groups with 28 students. We conducted the focus groups after the students from the 4 education programs had participated in the virtual reality simulation at 3 campuses at a specialized university in Norway. Each focus group interview was facilitated by 1 moderator and 1 facilitator, a combination of experienced researchers and novices. We followed a qualitative design using the 6-step thematic analysis described by Braun and Clarke. RESULTS: The analysis revealed 3 overall themes for students' experiences with the virtual reality simulation. The first theme, 360° videos provide observations for individual learning, illustrates how learning can take place through the students' experiences with sensory inputs and observations from the 360° videos. Students experienced that the video enabled them to individually reflect and achieve learning from what was considered a clinically relevant video. The second theme, 360° videos activate emotional learning, demonstrates how the students experienced emotional engagement when watching the 360° videos. The degree of realism provided in the video was considered as important for the students' learning. The last theme, Debrief sessions enhance comprehensive learning, pinpoints how the students experienced learning through reflective discussions with other students after watching the 360° videos. Students claimed this process to be a vital part of the learning activity. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual reality simulation represents a promising learning activity to enhance the professional learning of health care and social work students. It offers opportunities for individualized learning through observations, and it also engages students emotionally in the learning process. The combination of 360° videos and group discussions in virtual reality appears promising to enhance professional learning outcomes and competence, which may contribute to improved health care and social work services.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: By watching 360° videos in virtual reality headsets, students may experience being immersed in the portrayed situation. There is a paucity of empirical studies on the application of immersive 360° videos watched in virtual reality headsets for students in health care and social work education and the pedagogical theory guiding the development of such educational tools. This led to our interest in exploring how a virtual reality educational tool involving 360° videos can stimulate emotions and how this can be used as a pedagogical tool in these educational programs. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of faculty members and students regarding a prototype 360° video watched in virtual reality headsets during the development phase of an educational project. We addressed the following research questions: How does the virtual reality prototype stimulate emotions? How can virtual reality be used in higher education for health care and social work students? METHODS: We used a qualitative design and collected data through focus group interviews with project participants. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Our analysis identified 2 main themes in participants' experiences with the virtual reality prototype. The first theme highlights that when participants experienced watching the 360° video in a virtual reality headset, it stimulated their emotions as an authentic professional experience would. The second theme, contextualization of virtual reality, highlights participants' perceptions of how the virtual reality experience should be incorporated into a safe educational context. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that 360° videos with human actors who use eye contact with the camera can trigger emotions in the viewer and therefore serve as a pedagogic tool that can create authentic professional experiences for students. The participants expressed the view that the virtual reality educational tool could be used to prepare students for real-life practice in health care and social work. However, they underlined that 360° videos in virtual reality need to be contextualized in educational programs to create a safe environment for learning and to ensure follow-up on the emotions such experiences can trigger in students. Our results highlight the perceived importance of allowing students to reflect on the virtual reality experience in a safe setting and of follow-up by faculty members. In-person follow-up with students can be resource intensive for programs with large numbers of students and makes it challenging to offer repeated training, something that has been identified as one of the benefits of virtual reality.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Virtual reality has been gaining ground in health professions education and may offer students a platform to experience and master situations without endangering patients or themselves. When implemented effectively, virtual reality technologies may enable highly engaging learning activities and interactive simulations. However, implementation processes present challenges, and the key to successful implementation is identifying barriers and facilitators as well as finding strategies to address them. OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aimed to identify the literature on virtual reality implementation in health professions education, identify barriers to and facilitators of implementation, and highlight gaps in the literature in this area. METHODS: The scoping review was conducted based on the Joanna Briggs Institute Evidence Synthesis methodologies. Electronic searches were conducted in the Academic Search Elite, Education Source, and CINAHL databases on January 5, 2022, in Google Scholar on February 2 and November 18, 2022, and in PubMed database on November 18, 2022. We conducted hand searches of key items, reference tracking, and citation tracking and searches on government webpages on February 2, 2022. At least 2 reviewers screened the identified literature. Eligible studies were considered based on predefined inclusion criteria. The results of the identified items were analyzed and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: We included 7 papers and identified 7 categories related to facilitators of and barriers to implementation-collaborative participation, availability, expenses, guidelines, technology, careful design and evaluation, and training-and developed a model that links the categories to the 4 constructs from Carl May's general theory of implementation. All the included reports provided recommendations for implementation, including recommendations for careful design and evaluation, training of faculty and students, and faculty presence during use. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual reality implementation in health professions education appears to be a new and underexplored research field. This scoping review has several limitations, including definitions and search words, language, and that we did not assess the included papers' quality. Important implications from our findings are that ensuring faculty's and students' competence in using virtual reality technology is necessary for the implementation processes. Collaborative participation by including end users in the development process is another factor that may ensure successful implementation in higher education contexts. To ensure stakeholders' motivation and potential to use virtual reality, faculty and students could be invited to participate in the development process to ensure that the educational content is valued. Moreover, technological challenges and usability issues should be resolved before implementation to ensure that pedagogical content is the focus. This accentuates the importance of piloting, sufficient time resources, basic testing, and sharing of experiences before implementation. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/37222.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The use of virtual reality in higher education show great potential to promote novel and innovative learning experiences. Until recently, virtual reality has mostly been used in technical higher education, but lately medical education programs have begun using virtual reality. Virtual reality for health professional education improves the knowledge and skills of health professionals compared with traditional or other digital education initiatives. However, the implementation of technology in higher education is slow because of barriers to technology use and innovative and successful practices are not shared. It is, therefore, of great interest to explore how virtual reality is implemented in higher health professional and continuing education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this scoping review is to identify studies that reported implementation of virtual reality in higher health professional education, to identify barriers and facilitators for implementation, and to highlight research gaps in this area. METHODS: The scoping review will be conducted according to JBI Evidence Synthesis methodologies. CINAHL, the Academic Search Elite and Education Source electronic databases, and Google Scholar will be searched for studies published between 2017 and 2022. In addition, manual searching of key items, reference tracking, and citation tracking will be performed. Searches for white papers will also be manually conducted. All authors will independently extract data from full-text papers. We will use qualitative content analysis to abstract the findings. RESULTS: The literature searches were conducted in January and February 2022. The review is expected to be completed by fall 2022, after which time it will be submitted for publication. CONCLUSIONS: We anticipate that, from the review, we will be able to coordinate recommendations for and present the challenges of virtual reality initiatives in health professional education programs. We will present recommendations for future research. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/37222.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Adequate self-management is the cornerstone of type 2 diabetes treatment, as people make the majority of daily treatment measures and health decisions. The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and the complexity of diabetes self-management demonstrate the need for innovative and effective ways to deliver self-management support. eHealth interventions are promoted worldwide and hold a great potential in future health care for people with chronic diseases such as T2DM. However, many eHealth interventions face high dropout rates. This led to our interest in the experiences of participants who dropped out of an eHealth intervention for adults with T2DM, based on the Guided Self-Determination (GSD) counseling method. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aimed to explore experiences with an eHealth intervention based on GSD in general practice from the perspective of those who dropped out and to understand their reasons for dropping out. To the best of our knowledge, no previous qualitative study has focused on participants who withdrew from an eHealth self-management support intervention for adults with T2DM. METHODS: A qualitative design based on telephone interviews was used to collect data. The sample comprised 12 adults with type 2 diabetes who dropped out of an eHealth intervention. Data were collected in 2016 and subjected to qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: We identified one overall theme: "Losing motivation for intervention participation." This theme was illustrated by four categories related to the participants' experiences of the eHealth intervention: (1) frustrating technology, (2) perceiving the content as irrelevant and incomprehensible, (3) choosing other activities and perspectives, and (4) lacking face-to-face encounters. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that the eHealth intervention based on GSD without face-to-face encounters with nurses reduced participants' motivation for engagement in the intervention. To maintain motivation, our study points to the importance of combining eHealth with regular face-to-face consultations. Our study also shows that the perceived benefit of the GSD eHealth intervention intertwined with choosing to focus on other matters in complex daily lives are critical aspects in motivation for such interventions. This indicates the importance of giving potential participants tailored information about the aim, the content, and the effort needed to remain engaged in complex interventions so that eligible participants are recruited. Finally, motivation for engagement in the eHealth intervention was influenced by the technology used in this study. It seems important to facilitate more user-friendly but high-security eHealth technology. Our findings have implications for improving the eHealth intervention and to inform researchers and health care providers who are organizing eHealth interventions focusing on self-management support in order to reduce dropout rates.
