Exploring the experiences of nursing students in using immersive virtual reality to learn nursing skills

In recent years, virtual reality teaching applications exhibited exponential development in numerous fields. An increasing number of virtual reality application cases and modules have been developed in the nursing education field to verify their effectiveness.

The research objective is to understand the experience of nursing students in using virtual reality skill learning process.

This study is a qualitative research that adopts focus group research methods. The participants were able to freely describe their subjective feelings toward the virtual reality skill learning process.

This research was conducted in a nursing school in Taiwan. Purposive sampling was adopted to select 60 nursing students who participated in the Adult Nursing and Practice course. The participants were divided into six focus groups containing 10 participants each.

Aside from learning with traditional practice equipment, the students also experienced the virtual reality nasogastric tube care skill learning system. Focus group interviews were held from March 25 to 27, 2019. During the interview, we inquired about the students' subjective feelings toward the virtual reality skill learning system and reflected on its influence on the students' learning process.

An analysis of the focus group interview content of 60 students, revealed that the students' experience toward the virtual reality skill learning process could be classified into five themes, namely "convenient to practice, but requires adaptation," "fast skill learning process," "stress-free learning environment," "environmentally friendly," and "lacks a sense of reality."

Instead of replacing conventional skill teaching methods, future applications of the virtual reality nursing skill education support system shall serve as a student self-learning supporting tool. Additionally, the research and development of the virtual reality nursing skill education support system should focus on its stereognosis aspect and include an interactive function to upgrade the system into a practical teaching and learning support material.