Training situational awareness for scrub nurses: Error recognition in a virtual operating room

Area of Science:

• Medical Simulation
• Nursing Education
• Human Factors Engineering

Background:

• Virtual reality (VR) simulation offers a safe environment for nurse training.
• While effective for technical skills, VR's utility for non-technical skills like error recognition remains understudied.
• Improving situation awareness is crucial for surgical patient safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess error recognition capabilities in a virtual operating room (VOR) setting.
• To evaluate the impact of VR simulation on nurses' situation awareness.
• To explore differences between student and expert nurses in error detection within VR.

Main Methods:

• Eighteen scrub-nurse students and 8 expert scrub-nurses participated in a VR simulation.
• Participants identified errors within a simulated operating room scenario.
• Data collected included error detection rates, detection time, movement logs, situation awareness, workload, anxiety, and user experience.

Main Results:

• Higher error detection correlated with increased situation awareness, faster high-risk error identification, and greater immersion in VR.
• Participants detecting more errors reported lighter workload and higher satisfaction.
• Students explored the VOR more extensively and detected more moderate-risk errors compared to experts.

Conclusions:

• VR simulation is an acceptable and motivating training tool for nurses.
• It provides valuable, original data for debriefings, particularly for enhancing non-technical skills.
• VR simulation effectively supports the development of situation awareness and error recognition in surgical trainees.