Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Apr 2, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 2, 2024 - May 28, 2024
Date Accepted: Jan 2, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Fostering Affective Empathy through Virtual Reality: Exploring Media-Induced and Psychological Factors in Nursing Education
ABSTRACT
Background:
The transformation of healthcare education is underway, driven by advancements in immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR). VR has shown potential in enhancing surgical training, visualizing complex biomedical processes, and fostering empathy in patient care.
Objective:
This study aims to investigate the influence of VR and perspective-taking on affective empathy among nursing students, addressing a gap in the literature and extending beyond cognitive empathy.
Methods:
A 2 × 2 between-subjects design involving 69 nursing undergraduates from two Midwest universities was used. The study examined the impact of the media platform (VR vs. non-VR) and perspective-taking (parents vs. clinicians) on perceived self-location, narrative transportation, emotional engagement, and affective empathy using the narrative-focused video game "That Dragon, Cancer."
Results:
VR significantly enhanced perceived self-location, and adopting a clinician's perspective increased emotional engagement. However, VR did not significantly affect narrative transportation. An interaction effect was found between the platform and perspective on narrative transportation. Indirect effects of media elements on affective empathy through other psychological factors were also highlighted.
Conclusions:
VR has the potential to be a powerful tool in medical education, especially in fostering affective empathy. The study underscores the importance of perspective-taking in designing immersive learning experiences and advocates for the broader integration of VR technologies in medical curricula to enhance instructional quality and patient-centered care.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.