An Overview of the Educational Capabilities of Augmented and Virtual reality Technology in the Emergency Department

Teaching the necessary knowledge and skills in the emergency department has always faced challenges due to its importance, unique features and multidisciplinary expertise. Today, advances in information and communication technology have also revolutionized education. The purpose of this article is to investigate the feasibility and experiences of using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies in the education of the emergency department by reviewing the studies conducted in the world.

This research is based on a systematic review in which the quality of the articles was evaluated using the STROBE standard checklist. The primary studies carried out, through articles on the educational capacities of augmented and virtual reality technology in the emergency department; in Persian language databases; SID, Magiran and English language databases; Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar search engine were done until the end of September 2022. Farsi keywords; Emergency, medical emergencies, education, virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality were used as a combination of words; Also, Boolean search methods and OR operators and Mesh keywords including: Emergency, Education, Virtual Augmented, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, EMS, MR, VR, AR were used.

Among the 9 reviewed studies, the largest number of extracted studies, i.e. three articles, were conducted in China. Other articles were from America, Germany, Iran and Netherlands. The research method used in 8 articles was intervention, and only one article was tool design and content analysis using the Delphi method. The types of tools used in these studies were: a wearable module on the head with two categories of movement and operation, playing virtual reality simulation videos with the help of television and virtual reality glasses, a wearable headset and two hand controllers with triggers that make hand movements. Such as grasping, pushing and turning, virtual simulated scenes, an immersive room-scale multi-user virtual reality 3D simulation environment with a virtual emergency scenario, wearable modules and mouse and keyboard prototypes, and an interactive training module. The results of the studies also showed the improvement of educational performance, enthusiasm for learning, educational satisfaction, increased skills, improved response capacity, effectiveness of education and control of emotions in emergency situations.

The results of this study clarified several issues: 1- The volume of studies in the field of emergency department training with the help of virtual world tools is very small. 2- Augmented reality and mixed reality tools have not yet entered the field of medical education in the emergency department. 3- These tools can cause complications and challenges in using them. 4- Most of the studies have been conducted in the last 3 years, which show that this field of educational tools to promote and improve performance due to continuous evaluations is at the beginning.