Virtual reality helps medical and nursing students deal with agitated patients with empathy
Compounded by the effects of COVID-19, the rise in mental health issues has led to a rise in cases of unrest and violence against healthcare workers in recent years in Singapore. As inadequate management of agitation can lead to physical and psychological harm, it is important that healthcare professionals can develop skills to manage agitation in a safe and empathetic manner.
A blended and interdisciplinary learning approach
To improve the teaching of agitation management in clinical settings, Yong Loo Lin Medical School at NUS (NUS Medicine) has developed a new virtual reality program to teach interns and students in nursing the effective management of agitated patients using empathetic means, in a safe, reproducible and controlled manner. Entitled “Virtual Reality in Agitation Management (VRAM)”, the program helps students acquire the skills needed to manage patients in virtual reality, which reflect the behavioral characteristics of patients often encountered by healthcare professionals in the field. . The NUS IT team also provided the team with technical support and advice, while an external vendor was hired to help develop the program. Led by Assistant Professor Cyrus Ho from the Department of Psychological Medicine at NUS Medicine, the team is made up of medical and nursing staff, as well as medical students, from NUS Medicine, the “Alice Lee” Nursing Education Center and the CHU “National University Hospital”. As healthcare professionals from different disciplines often work together, the team developed the program to integrate learning from doctors and nurses, in order to provide comprehensive patient care in the future. “In the future, we will see more patients in distress, and healthcare professionals will need to show empathy while making collaborative decisions under pressure. Through the blended learning approach, we hope to provide learning more comprehensive to help future generations of healthcare professionals learn the skills to manage agitation, while demonstrating empathy and compassion,” said Assistant Professor Ho, who is also a consultant in the Department of Psychological Medicine. of the NUH. Assistant Professor Shawn Goh, from NUS Nursing, who is part of the team that developed the programme, also provided advice from the nurses’ perspective. He added, “The virtual reality setting provides a safe environment for students to learn because choosing the wrong answer options will not cause harm to anyone. Instead, they learn action. to take, which will then help them handle real-life scenarios well and avoid life-threatening consequences for patients and healthcare staff.”
Video 1 managing agitated patients with empathy using virtual reality:
Video 2: NUS Medicine Faculty of Medicine in Singapore: