Tucson Medical Center (TMC) is piloting a virtual reality training programme for nurses, patient care technicians and environmental services staff, developed with the immersive studio 3lbXR. Staff practise high-risk, safety-critical tasks in simulated hospital rooms rather than on live patients. KGUN reported the launch on 23 June 2022, and TMC nurses and staff trained in VR headsets at a session at TMC on 27 June 2022.
How the training works
The scenarios cover C. difficile sanitation, patient room cleaning, fall prevention and suicide prevention. The virtual rooms mirror real rooms at TMC, and 3lbXR builds the entire environment for each scenario. Trainees wear VR headsets and use hand controllers to pick up and handle items in the simulated room. At the 27 June 2022 session, 3lbXR technical director Chris Castaldi demonstrated how to use the training scenario to TMC nurses and staff.
Funding and research
The training is part of a programme funded by the TMC Foundation that includes a research study aiming to enrol more than 200 registered nurses. The study is intended to evaluate nurses' confidence and competence in a range of clinical abilities using the VR modules; no results have been reported.
TMC's director of Professional Practice, Dr. Anissa Guzman, says the format lets mistakes happen without real consequences for patients and gives staff repeated practice of high-risk events. 3lbXR describes a suite of VR training applications built with TMC for registered nurses and primary care technicians, including a fall prevention module used in the research study.
