Dr. Kendal Bailey, Director of Educational Services at SimX, recently participated in a webinar hosted by HealthySimulation.com on “Enhancing Clinical Education with VR Simulation: Leveraging SimX for Healthcare Faculty and Students.” This webinar highlights how SimX supports healthcare education through immersive VR simulations, curriculum integration support, faculty development workshops, and customer support. In her presentation, Dr. Bailey showcases how SimX aligns with findings from systemic reviews, demonstrating the effectiveness of VR simulation in enhancing clinical knowledge, skills, and learning outcomes.
The Effectiveness of VR in Healthcare Education
Dr. Bailey shared with the audience that many studies show how effective VR can be in healthcare education. According to research, learners and educators can hope to see the following benefits with VR simulation:
Watch the full webinar for all references and resources recommended by Dr. Bailey.
Facing Challenges with VR Education
While there are, of course, many benefits to VR simulation training, Dr. Bailey shared that it is important to understand some of the challenges as well, so educators can make a plan to optimize their VR experience. Some challenges can overshadow learning goals if unaddressed, but targeted support can prevent many of these problems. Some difficulties with VR include:
Your users have unique needs that you need to prepare for and make policies for. To that end, Dr. Bailey mentioned that “simply adding technology is not going to benefit everybody. It has to really support and enhance your curriculum…it needs to be a well-matched, intense conversation of where you think it would be most appropriate.”
“There’s a lot that you’ve got to look at,” Dr. Bailey added, “VR has that flexibility to be able to continue to customize it, change it, use it in a variety of ways so that you’re meeting the needs of your program across the VR use.”
Lance Baily, the CEO of HealthySimulation and the host of this webinar, also mentioned “Just because an XR headset might be easier to deploy on paper than, say, a full manikin with an AV system and server racks and all of it, you still need to do the same type of consideration process for clinical education groups, their training, their capabilities, the technical integrations of these things, how are they all going to work, how are they going to fit into and integrate into the curriculum across multiple disciplines, how are we going to set up for that training program and on and on.”
Needs and Expectations of Faculty and Educators
So you’ve decided you want to integrate VR into your simulation program. You may think, “I don’t have a team that understands VR yet. I don’t know how to adopt this,” Dr. Bailey said. You must first understand how best to support your faculty and educators so that adoption is as pain-free as possible.
Dr. Bailey noted three focus areas to consider when addressing your team’s needs and expectations: training and support, content creation, and reusability. She mentioned that facilitators and educators need VR applications that are easy to use and navigate, utilize best practice standards to achieve optimal learner outcomes, and have technical support and training to overcome technical challenges and effectively use VR simulation.
Regarding content creation, she mentioned that efforts are required to develop VR content, but limited instructional design and options, and a lack of readily available, suitable content can be barriers. Not only that, but educators need to be able to reuse content within the virtual environment to save time and effort.
SimX Educational/Integration Support Service
Dr. Bailey said, “At SimX, we want to take a really intensive, unique approach to supporting institutions because our goal is to create better clinicians. We want a better healthcare environment, and we know simulation is the modality to get there.”
To help you face the challenges of incorporating VR into your simulation program, the SimX team is now offering new and expanded services for customer success. The SimX Educational Service and Integration Support offers tailored plans for every step of your VR journey. From essential tools with minimal guidance to advanced training and continuous expert support, we empower educators to seamlessly implement immersive learning experiences that make an impact.
Customers can choose the level of support that fits their goals and let our experts help your institution redefine learning with the SimX team. Whether you’re just starting or aiming to master VR integration, SimX’s support plans are designed to meet your institution’s unique needs. Read more about the SimX Educational Support Services here.
Dr. Kendal Bailey highlighted SimX’s usability and unique offerings throughout her presentation. She mentioned that SimX offers comprehensive onboarding for our software platform as well as moderator resource guides to support effective facilitation of VR simulations. Additionally, SimX has the largest scenario library and customization options for complex scenarios that include multiple states to allow for reusability.
SimX also offers customized implementation plans. Our education support staff works with you to create individualized plans to help identify how VR simulation can seamlessly fit into your curriculum based on your institution’s specific metrics and needs. The SimX team will then assist educators in choosing scenarios that will best fit your learning needs.
At SimX, we are dedicated to making VR simulation education cheaper, easier, and far more accessible than ever before. We hope we can be part of your VR experience!
Watch the webinar now on HealthySimulation.com to learn more and hear Dr. Bailey’s full presentation!
Q&A Session
Participants in this webinar came from all kinds of VR backgrounds. Some were experienced with VR, others were just starting their journey! Either way, many had questions about how VR can best help them reach their simulation goals.
Question: Are there really already 300 simulations ready to use at SimX?
Answer: Absolutely! Explore our marketplace and talk to a SimX representative to learn more!
Question: How many users can get into a headset and run through a scenario together?
Answer: We’ve gotten up to 12 users in a single scenario, but you could do even more if you have the headsets! However, you should do what is clinically appropriate and what is relevant to the scenario. For example, you wouldn’t want 12 different users in the same hospital room to treat one patient. That would be unrealistic and counterproductive. SimX does have a few mass casualty scenarios that would be great for a larger group! Each learner could join the scenario in a wireless headset, and the entire team can work together to organize and triage in a mass casualty emergency.
Question: How can SimX best benefit a large group of students who all want to experience VR simulation?
Answer: Even if you have limited headsets, large groups of students can still benefit from VR simulation in many ways! Some educators may have one or two students run through a VR scenario in front of the entire class, with their view displayed on a big screen so everyone can watch, analyze, and even debrief together after completing the scenario. Students can then take turns getting up in front of the class and running through different scenarios.
Other educators have explored a peer-to-peer program where students run through a scenario together, with one facilitating and others in the headset. Yet another way to utilize SimX is to use it as lecture support. Educators may be lecturing on a certain topic or procedure, then get in the headset and demonstrate what they were teaching for the students in a realistic, virtual environment. You can ask the students, “What do I do next?” and let them practice critical decision-making throughout the scenario.
The SimX platform is not restricted to specific objectives; you can really use it however you’d like! But if you need some help figuring out how best to utilize VR simulations in your curriculum, the SimX education and integration support team is here to help!
Question: Does SimX have cases from the patient’s perspective?
Answer: We are VR engineers who build custom content for institutions and their specific needs. We can always talk with you and work to develop a scenario that will fit your needs. Currently, the SimX marketplace does not have a scenario that is strictly from a patient’s point of view. However, we offer many scenarios centered on building communication skills and understanding different patient perspectives.
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