JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Virtual reality (VR)-based simulation is being increasingly used to train medical students in emergency medicine. However, because the usefulness of VR may depend on various factors, the best practices for implementing this technology in the medical school curriculum are yet to be determined.

Objective:

The overall objective of our study was to assess the perceptions of a large cohort of students towards VR-based training and to identify the associations between these attitudes and individual factors, such as gender and age.

Methods:

The authors implemented a voluntary, VR-based teaching session in the emergency medicine course at the medical faculty in Tübingen, Germany. Fourth year medical students were invited to participate on a voluntary basis. Afterwards, we asked the students about their perceptions, collected data on individual factors and assessed the test scores achieved by them in the VR-based assessment scenarios. We used ordinal regression analysis and linear mixed effect analysis to detect the impact of individual factors on the questionnaire answers.

Results:

A total of 129 students participated in our study (mean age 24.7 ± 2.9 years, 39.8% male, 60.2% female). No student had previously used VR for learning and only 4.7% of the students had prior experience with VR. The majority of students agreed that VR can convey complex issues quickly (91%), that VR is a useful addition to mannequin-based courses (88%) or could even replace them (82%), and that VR simulations should also be used for examinations (80%). However, females showed significantly less agreement with these statements. Most students perceived the VR scenario as realistic (53%) and intuitive (48%), with a relatively lower agreement for the latter among female respondents. We found high agreement among all participants for “immersion” (69%) but strong disagreement (54%) for empathy with the virtual patient. Only 3% of the students felt confident regarding the medical content. Responses for the linguistic aspects of the scenario were largely mixed; however, the majority of students were confident with the English language (not native) scenarios and disagreed that the scenario should be offered in their native language (females agreed more strongly than male students). The majority of students would not have felt confident with the scenarios in the real-world context (53%). Although physical symptoms during VR sessions were reported by 16% of the respondents, this did not lead to the termination of the simulation. The regression analysis revealed that the final test scores were not influenced by gender, age or prior experience in emergency medicine or with virtual reality.

Conclusions:

In this study, we observed a strong positive attitude of the medical students towards VR-based teaching and assessment. However, this positivity was comparatively lower among female students, potentially indicating that gender differences need to be addressed when VR is implemented in the curriculum. Interestingly, gender, age or prior experience did not influence the final test scores. Furthermore, confidence regarding the medical content was low, which suggests that the students may need further training in emergency medicine. Clinical Trial: The Ethics Committees of the Faculty of Medicine at Tübingen University Hospital approved the study (No. 340/2021BO2). All methods were carried out in accordance with the Helsinki declaration. Participation in the study was voluntary.