Using immersive virtual reality technology to enhance nursing education: A comparative pilot study to understand...

The U.S. faces a national shortage of nurses. The emergence of human-centered digital technologies has directly impacted nursing education. Using immersive Virtual Reality related digital technology to assist and enhance nurse education is promising but not yet fully understood. This study aims to understand the effectiveness and efficacy of immersive Virtual Reality nursing education approaches through a comparative pilot study. Three immersive Virtual Reality scenarios based on basic nursing skills were developed. A traditional video lecture approach including the same contents was used as a comparable approach to investigate the effectiveness and efficacy performance of the proposed immersive Virtual Reality approach. 22 participants were recruited from a college. Effectiveness was measured through motivation and knowledge gain, while efficacy was evaluated through simulation sickness, user experience, and system usability. The results showed that the VR approach has above "acceptable" efficacy performance, which indicates participants are willing to accept this novel education approach. The effectiveness results indicate that the VR approach has similar performance with the video approach in delivering nursing contents. One limitation of this investigation is that the sample size is relatively small and further larger sample sizes are needed for future analysis.