Developing a virtual reality (VR) application for practicing the ABCDE approach for systematic clinical observation

The Airways, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, Exposure (ABCDE) approach is an international approach for systematic clinical observation. It is an essential clinical skill for medical and healthcare professionals and should be practiced repeatedly. One way to do so is by using virtual reality (VR). The aim was therefore to develop a VR application to be used by inexperienced health students and professionals for self-instructed practice of systematic clinical observation using the ABCDE approach.

An iterative human-centred approach done in three overlapping phases; deciding on the ABCDE approach, specifying the requirements, and developing the application.

A total of 138 persons were involved. Eight clinical observations were included in the ABCDE approach. The requirements included making it possible for inexperienced users to do self-instructed practice, a high level of immersion, and a sense of presence including mirroring the physical activities needed to do the ABCDE approach, allowing for both single and multiplayer, and automatic feedback with encouragement to repeat the training. In addition to many refinements, the testing led to the development of some new solutions. Prominent among them was to get players to understand how to use the VR hand controllers and start to interact with the VR environment and more instructions like showing videos on how to do observations. The solutions in the developed version were categorised into 15 core features like onboarding, instructions, quiz, and feedback.

A virtual reality application for self-instructed practice of systematic clinical observation using the ABCDE approach can be developed with sufficient testing by inexperienced health students and professionals.