Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 3, 2019
Date Accepted: Jan 27, 2020
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Nurse-physician communication team training in virtual reality versus live simulation: A randomized controlled study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Interprofessional team training is needed to improve nurse-physician communication skills that are lacking in clinical practice. Simulation has been proved to be an effective learning approach for team training. Yet, it has logistical constraints that called for the exploration of virtual environments in delivering team training.
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate a team training programme using virtual reality versus conventional live simulation on medical and nursing students’ communication skills performances and teamwork attitudes.
Methods:
In June 2018, the authors implemented a nurse-physician communication team training using the communication tools. A randomized controlled trial study was conducted with 120 undergraduate medical and nursing students who were randomly assigned to undertake the team training using virtual reality or live simulation. Participants from both groups were tested on their communication performance through team-based simulation assessment. Their teamwork attitudes were evaluated using interprofessional attitudes surveys that were administered before, immediately after and two months after the study interventions.
Results:
The team-based simulation assessment revealed no significant difference in the communication performance posttest scores (P=0.29) between the virtual and simulation groups. Both groups reported significant increase (P<0.05) in the interprofessional attitudes posttest scores from baseline scores, with no significant difference found between the groups over the three time-point.
Conclusions:
Our study outcomes did not show an inferiority of team training using virtual reality when compared with live simulation, supporting the potential use of virtual reality to substitute conventional simulation training for communication team training. Future study can leverage on use of artificial intelligence technology in virtual reality to replace costly human-controlled facilitator to achieve an even better scalability and sustainability of team-based training in interprofessional education. Clinical Trial: Ethical approval has been granted by NUS-IRB Ref No: S-17-107
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