Design and development of a virtual reality simulator for advanced cardiac life support training

The use of virtual reality (VR) training tools for medical education could lead to improvements in the skills of clinicians while providing economic incentives for healthcare institutions. The use of VR tools can also mitigate some of the drawbacks currently associated with providing medical training in a traditional clinical environment such as scheduling conflicts and the need for specialized equipment (e.g., high-fidelity manikins). This paper presents the details of the framework and the development methodology associated with a VR-based training simulator for advanced cardiac life support, a time critical, team-based medical scenario. In addition, we also report the key findings of a usability study conducted to assess the efficacy of various features of this VR simulator through a postuse questionnaire administered to various care providers. The usability questionnaires were completed by two groups that used two different versions of the VR simulator. One version consisted of the VR trainer with it all its features and a minified version with certain immersive features disabled. We found an increase in usability scores from the minified group to the full VR group.