Impact on Student Confidence and Acceptability of a Virtual Reality (VR) Exoskeleton for Teaching Postpartum Uterine...

Virtual Reality(VR) has been utilised to teach procedural skills in medical education, however traditional VR is limited by absent haptic feedback. A VR exoskeleton provides haptic feedback with precise hand tracking movements, improving students' confidence and ability to perform procedural skills. Traditional VR has shown to improve procedural skills in Obstetrics, such as intrauterine balloon insertion; a skill required to manage post-partum haemorrhage (PPH).

Aim to assess the acceptability of a VR exoskeleton for teaching intrauterine balloon insertion to medical students/resident doctors including their preference compared with didactic lectures and the incidence of side-effects.

A prospective acceptability trial involving medical students (clinical placement) and resident doctors working in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. All participants underwent a VR tutorial for PPH management followed by a guided insertion of an intrauterine balloon on an avatar using the VR exoskeleton. Students completed a confidence score for intrauterine balloon insertion both pre and post training. Post training students completed a 13-question acceptability score and recommendation score.

A total of 38 participants were recruited with over half being medical students (57.89%, n = 22/38). The VR exoskeleton scored highly across 12 domains (strongly agree/agree) and slightly lower for realism (agree/neutral). Medical students and more junior doctors reported significant improvements in procedural confidence pre and post training(p = 0.04). Over 86% of participants would recommend VR over didactic lectures.

VR exoskeleton is an acceptable tool which improves participants confidence for intrauterine postpartum balloon insertion and the majority preferred this learning medium to didactic lectures.