Ready, (Head)Set, Go! Virtual Reality Immersive Simulation for Interprofessional Education

As health professional school enrollments have increased to match the heathcare demand, there is increased competition for clinical sites, making it more difficult to expose students to the variety of experiences needed to develop clinical judgment and core interprofessional competencies, including safety, communication, and collaboration. Interprofessional simulation (IPS) experiences provide students with a safe, realistic backdrop to practice interprofessional competencies and are an important aspect of health professional education. However, IPS activities can be labor-intensive to organize and complete as students must be together at the same time, in the same place. Commercially available video-based IPE activities are available; however, they are generic and difficult to align with the learning objectives and are cost-prohibitive due to membership fees. Virtual reality–based immersive simulation (VRIS) can provide students with quality IPE experiences while overcoming the barriers of time, place, and other logistics constraints. Participants will get an opportunity to experience a VRIS-based interprofessional experience created by an interprofessional research team at WesternU. They will also participate in interprofessional teams creating VR-based simulation scenarios and recognize the logistics, time, cost, and other issues to implement the same at their institutions and educational programs.

Authors: Harsha Deoghare, Tammie Keller Johnson, Valerie Quan, Joshua Cameron, Ruth Trudgeon, Marsha Guillaume, Tracy Moore, David Dikter