New Case Study - A VRLE For Midwifery Students

 

Over the last year or so we've delivered 3 simulations for use by midwifery students at Bournemouth University as part of a Virtual Reality Learning Environment (VRLE) project. The exercises cover:

• A Urinalysis appointment at a clinic with an expectant mother
• A home visit to do a routine post-birth baby & mother check and a check on safeguarding issues
• Dealing with a post-partum haemorrhage in a hospital ward

Student responses have included:

“It is a different and enjoyable way to learn"

“I think it is a good way of demonstrating what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes.”

"The VRLE is a really useful learning tool that I hope is continuously used throughout the duration of our course.”

You can view a video presentation on the exercises by BU project lead Denyse King on YouTube:

Detailed results will be published in Denyse's doctoral research but “the evidence gathered from 311

healthcare students demonstrates that VRLE have a statistically significant positive impact on: learning, confidence, clinical intuition, humanisation of healthcare and students’ perceived positive onward impact on service user safety.”

Our latest case study summarising the project is also now available - just click to download.

Fieldscapes and Midwifery Training at Bournemouth University

As you may have seen from our Fieldscapes Twitter stream we've just reached the delivery stage of our first Midwifery Fieldscapes lesson (on Urinalysis) for Bournemouth University's Midwifery training team. We had a number of meetings with the team over the summer and then went away and customised our existing Simple Clinic space into "Daden Community Hospital", and added more generic medical props, and also brought in some BU specific posters. Nash then created the first exercise based on an agreed flowchart/storyboard and now we're just getting to the end of the iterations with the team, stakeholders and students. The final step for us will be to train the BU team on how to use Fieldscapes to continue to maintain and develop the exercise (and create other exercises), before they then start their evaluation with the current student cohort.

Response so far from all involved has been excellent with comments such as:

• "I had such a cool day at work recently – I got to play with the first of my VR healthcare education environments using Oculus Rift"
• " I absolutely love this! A brilliant way to learn" - student feedback
• "So amazing to see my project becoming a reality – I hope the students love this way of bridging the gap between classroom theory and clinical practice"
• "That was brilliant loved it! can’t wait to do more. Very informative" - student feedback
• "Delighted that the Oculus Rift dramatically altered the look and feel of the clinical room, and that the handheld Haptic feedback controls added to the experience"

Being Fieldscapes the exercise can be experiences on a PC/Mac or Android device, and in VR on Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard on Android. One of our final tasks is integrating one of the £2-£3 hand controllers for the Cardboard go go along with the c.£15-£20 VR-BOX headsets that BU have (VR doesn't have to be expensive!).

We'll keep you posted as developments and evaluation progress and we're already talking to BU about other exciting way to take the training.

You can read more about the BU view on the project on their blog posts at:

• http://www.djkirkby.co.uk/public-health/mixed-reality/ (includes video)
• https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/2017/09/19/using-fieldscapes-as-an-authoring-tool-for-creating-immersive-learning/