JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Various face-to-face training opportunities have been lost due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Instructor development workshops for advanced resuscitation (i.e., advanced life support [ALS]) training courses are no exception. Virtual reality (VR) is an attractive strategy for remote training. However, to our knowledge, there are no reports of resuscitation instructor training programs held in a virtual space.

Objective:

This study aimed to investigate the learning effects of an instructor development workshop conducted in a virtual space.

Methods:

In this observational study, we created a virtual workshop space using NEUTRANS, a commercial VR collaboration service. The instructor development workshop for the ALS training course was held in a virtual space (i.e., termed the VR course) as a certified workshop by the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine. We asked thirteen instructor candidates (students) who participated in the VR course to provide a workshop report (VR group). Reports from the previously held face-to-face workshop (i.e., the FTF course/group) were likewise prepared for comparison. Five certified instructor trainers viewed and scored the reports on a five-point Likert scale.

Results:

All students completed the VR course without any problems and received certificates of completion. The scores for the VR group and the FTF group did not differ at the level of statistical significance (median, 3.8 [25-75th percentile, 3.8 – 4.0] and 4.2 [3.9 – 4.2], respectively).

Conclusions:

We successfully conducted an instructor development workshop in the virtual space. We observed the same learning as a face-to-face workshop.