The impact of teacher’s presence on learning basic surgical tasks with virtual reality headset among medical students

ABSTRACT

Background

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the presence of a teacher affects learning related outcomes in teaching basic surgical tasks with a Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

Methods

26 fourth-year medical studentsparticipated in a voluntary exercise. Students practiced basic surgical procedure exercises using the VR4HEALTHCARE application in VR with OCULUS Rift S glasses. 12 students performed the exercises under the guidance of a teacher and 14 without the teacher present. After the exercise, the groups filled out a feedback form. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0 software using the Mann-Whitney U test and multivariate analysis of variance.

Results

The most important data collected related to whether the student learned something new and whether VR adds value to medical education. Ratings were based on a scale of 0–10 (0 = worst, 10 = best). When the teacher was present, on average, the students felt that they were learning something new and gave an average rating of 7.8 ± 1.8, and when the teacher was not present 5.3 ± 2.6 (p = 0.003). VR added value to teaching with a rating of 7.8 ± 1.7 when the teacher was present and 5.5 ± 3.0 when not present (p = 0.045). This study also analyzed specific use of VR for abscess incision, suturing and insertion of a suprapubic catheter.

Discussion

When a teacher was present VR added value to teaching and the usefulness and usability of VR was experienced more positively. The student should also have adequate knowledge of the subject to be taught before VR training.

Conclusions

VR adds value to teaching, but VR exercises may not completely replace high-quality traditional teaching methods. Consequently, it is important to determine the differences between VR and traditional teaching methods and how to combine these methods in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• VR
• virtual reality
• HMD
• head-mounted display
• surgical education
• teaching methods

Acknowledgments

A non-peer-reviewed pre-print of the present manuscript has been available at researchsquare.com. The Authors possess all permissions of the present manuscript. We would also like to thank Kuopio University Hospital Microsurgery Center for the use of the facilities during the study.

Disclosure statement

Henrik Nuutinen is a shareholder of VR4Healthcare. There are no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Ethical approval

According to the 488/1999 Finnish Medical Research Act (amendment 295/2004, 794/2010), research related to the development of teaching quality does not require an opinion from the research ethics committee. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

Declarations

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.