Incorporation of virtual reality into medical physiology

The use of virtual reality (VR) in medical education has been shown to be effective in student engagement and learning. Medical physiology is an intensive 10-wk course at Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine. In this article, we describe how we incorporated VR into medical physiology. Our goal was to increase student engagement in learning the physiology of the autonomic nervous system. We used a simulated case in the Acadicus VR platform, and we used the 3D Organon VR platform for anatomical tracing of various components of the autonomic nervous system. This article describes how we incorporated the session into the course and the performance of students on questions associated with the topic of autonomic nervous system before and after addition of the VR session. Limitations for the observations are discussed.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Virtual reality is being used in medical education as it allows creating a simulated clinical environment that can be manipulated by the student to facilitate their learning. In this paper, we describe how we used virtual reality platforms to create a session for the anatomy and physiology of the autonomic nervous system. Medical educators can make use of various virtual reality platforms to immerse students in learning the basic sciences.