Research progress on the application of virtual simulation in medical education

Medical education is fundamental to developing clinical competence, directly influencing care quality and patient safety. Traditional teaching models have long faced structural limitations, including scarce physical resources and restricted clinical exposure, which hinder the training of versatile professionals needed in modern health care. Virtual simulation (VS), by providing a high-fidelity, repeatable, and low-risk learning environment, offers a promising solution to these challenges. This narrative article reviews recent applications of VS in basic medicine, clinical medicine, and nursing education. Although existing evidence supports its educational benefits, most studies rely on short-term, small-sample designs and lack evaluation of long-term clinical transfer or cost-effectiveness. Persistent issues include high device heterogeneity and insufficient integration of nontechnical skills training. Future efforts should prioritize multicenter longitudinal research, platform standardization, and the incorporation of artificial intelligence to enable personalized adaptive learning-moving VS toward a core component of medical education.