Extended reality technologies in child health education for undergraduate healthcare students: A scoping review

The aim of this scoping review is to describe and map studies investigating the use of extended reality (XR) in child health education for undergraduate healthcare students.

Globally there is a need for more child health practitioners. Educators need to prepare healthcare students to care for this population group. XR tools such as virtual reality (VR) are increasingly used in healthcare education to immerse students in a scenario and engage them in learning. There is an increasing number of studies reporting the use of XR to teach students about child health related topics.

A scoping review was undertaken to explore studies on this topic.

2262 articles were initially identified for review and 22 were included for this scoping review. These were reported using a framework for scoping studies and reported using the PRISMA ScR guidelines.

Of the 22 articles included, most were published between 2021 and 2023, in the USA. Medicine was the most reported discipline and VR was the most commonly used technology. All studies reported on an example that involved an unwell child.

This scoping review found that there were no applications that reported on a well child scenario which is an important finding as learning about a well child is critical for this workforce. This scoping review also highlighted that there is potentially an inequity across health care roles in the use of this technology in healthcare education as Medicine was the most common discipline, followed by Nursing.