JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Virtual reality has been gaining ground in health professional higher education and may offer students a platform within which to experience situations and learn how to master them without endangering patients or themselves. When implemented well, virtual reality technologies may enable highly engaging learning activities and interactive simulations. However, implementation processes present challenges, and key to successful implementation is identifying barriers and facilitators, as well as finding strategies to address them.

Objective:

This scoping review aims to identify the literature on virtual reality implementation in health professional higher education, identify barriers to and facilitators of implementation, and highlight literature gaps in this area.

Methods:

The scoping review was conducted based on JBI Evidence Synthesis methodologies. Electronic searches were conducted in Academic Search Elite, Education Source, CINAHL, and Google Scholar databases in January and February 2022. Furthermore, we conducted hand searches of key items, reference tracking, and citation tracking, as well as government webpages. At least two reviewers screened the identified literature based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results from identified items were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results:

Articles that reported on facilitators focused primarily on human agents preparing for and performing within the virtual reality environment, as well as on the system’s perceived convenience. Several barriers to virtual reality implementation were mentioned, particularly concerning expenses, guidelines, and technology. All included reports provide recommendations for implementation, including recommendations for careful design and evaluation, training of faculty and students, and faculty presence during use. We identified seven categories relating in different ways to facilitators of and barriers to implementation provided in the available literature––1) collaborative participation, 2) availability, 3) expenses, 4) guidelines, 5) technology, 6) careful design and evaluation, and 7) training––and developed a model that links our categories to the four constructs from Carl May’s general theory of implementation.

Conclusions:

Virtual reality implementation in health professional higher education appears to be a new and underexplored research field. Our findings indicate that ensuring faculty and students’ competence using virtual reality technology is necessary for implementation processes. Collaborative participation by including end-users in the development process is another factor that may ensure successful implementation in a higher education context. To secure motivation and stakeholders’ potential in using virtual reality, faculty and students could be invited to participate in the development process to ensure that 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, and basic testing and sharing of experiences before implementation. Clinical Trial: n/a