New Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE) medical education
Craig Goolsby1, Ryan Vest2, Tress Goodwin3
1Department of Military and Emergency Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814.
Objective:
Accomplish the first large-scale combat casualty training using multiple-modality hybrid simulation in the Uniformed Services University's one-of-a-kind three-dimensional Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE).
Methods:
91 first-year medical students (MS1) completed a WAVE training session as part of their Combat Medical Skills course. In teams of 6 students, they treated two combat casualties with blast wounds (one a SimMan 3G, and another a standardized patient) during15-minute scenarios in the WAVE. The WAVE is a unique medical simulation environment comprising an 8,000-square-foot virtual space composed of two pods surrounded by circumferential 9 × 12-foot movie screens and a high-fidelity directional sound system. Students completed WAVE quality assurance surveys to describe their impressions.
Results:
91 MS1s were trained in a 4.5-hour period (including pre- and post-briefs) without technical difficulties during this inaugural training experience. Student survey data indicated a strong desire for more WAVE training in the curriculum (2.9 on a 3-point Leikert scale), and a strong preference for training in the WAVE vs. traditional training methods (4.6 on a 5-point Leikert scale).
Conclusions:
The novel WAVE platform can be implemented successfully for combat casualty training and represents a significant technological advancement in simulated military medical training.
