JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Tele-mentorship provides a way to maintain the professional skills of isolated rural healthcare workers. The incorporation of Augmented Reality (AR) technology into tele-mentoring systems could be used to mentor healthcare professionals remotely under different clinical situations.

Objective:

To evaluate the usability of AR technology in tele-mentorship for managing clinical scenarios in a simulation laboratory.

Methods:

A quasi-experimental design was used. Four experienced health professionals and fifteen novice health practitioners were recruited for the roles of mentors and mentees, respectively, and then trained in the use of the AR setup. In the experiment, each mentee wearing an AR headset was asked to respond to four different clinical scenarios: Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS), Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI), Pneumonia Severe Reaction to Antibiotics (PSRA), and Hypoglycaemic Emergency (HE). Their mentor used a laptop to provide remote guidance following treatment protocols developed for each scenario. Rating scales were used to measure the AR’s usability, mentorship effectiveness, and mentees’ self-confidence and skill performance.

Results:

Mentors and mentees were positive about using the AR technology despite some technical issues and the time required to become familiar with the technology. The positive experience of tele-mentorship was highlighted (mean of 4.8 ± 0.414 for mentees and mean of 4.25 ± 0.5 for mentors on the 5-point Likert scale). Mentees’ confidence in managing each of the four scenarios improved after tele-mentoring (p < 0.001). Mentee’s individual skill performance rates ranged from 98% on the ACS scenario to 97% on the AMI, PSRA, and HE.

Conclusions:

The study provides evidence about the usability of AR technology in tele-mentorship for managing clinical scenarios. The findings suggest the potential for this technology to be used to support health workers in real-world clinical environments and point to new directions of research.