It is rare to find nurses with skills in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). But at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) that is about to change.
This is thanks to a woman academic steering the process in upskilling the School of Nursing in this field through a knowledge exchange programme with the University of Missouri in the United States.
Professor Jennifer Chipps from the School of Nursing is Chair for Digital Health for the Faculty of Community Health Sciences at UWC. She initiated the first UWC nursing staff to visit the US to learn about their programme. She invited artificial intelligence expert, Prof Knoo Lee, from the University of Missouri (UM) Sinclair School of Nursing and Institute of Data Science and Informatics, to introduce students to some tried and tested virtual reality options to be implemented in UWC’s nursing curriculum.
UWC and UM developed a study which aimed to test the feasibility of a self-developed VR nursing simulation at both universities from 2024 to the end of 2025. Prof Knoo said: “If the results are successful, the plan is to maintain an open channel between the two institutions to facilitate the implementation of the VR simulation at UWC once its feasibility is confirmed.”
During Prof Lee’s visit to UWC, the writer of this piece had a turn to experience virtual reality (VR) first hand. In the spacious lecture room, emptied of all tables and chairs, with four television screens posted all in each corner of the room, the device is held in each hand which acts as virtual hands. Once the VR headpiece is fitted, the physical space is transformed into a virtual hospital set-up, an accurate replica of a typical South African private clinic; complete with nursing staff walking past and a doctor standing at a patient’s bedside. Making it even more realistic is a concerned family member on a chair beside the patient’s bed, while beeping monitors read patients’ vitals overhead.
The experience finds one passing through virtual staff members, with curtains separating the virtual user from the next bed. It takes a lot of self-discipline not to move the curtain out of the way and it feels strange knowing that the curtain is not really there; you can actually just pass through it.
When it was UWC third-year nursing student Nnenna Osondo’s turn, she took on the role of an emergency nurse taking care of three different patients. She was able to monitor the vital signs of the patients by using the device’s hand controls, then entered information on a touchscreen device.
“It is so amazing. I got to meet patients. One of them was going through recess and I had to call a code blue and I was getting the crash cart and everything. It was like everything was so real, but like in a cartoon form,” said Osondo.
“I felt like I was literally in the facility and it was such an amazing experience. If we get to do this during our simulation practices, there’s going to be such a difference compared to just speaking to a mannequin that doesn’t speak back to you. I definitely love this.
“It is wonderful that we as a generation get to experience virtual reality and get to incorporate the changes that are happening in the world of technology. I think we are going to have a better nursing education and will deal better in hospital scenarios, but in a much safer way.”
Prof Chipps explained that the collaborative project with UM would address challenges such as high equipment costs and lack of locally relevant scenarios in South Africa.
“We are adapting the technology to suit the South African context,” she said.
Prof Chipps, who has always had an interest in digital health and digital technology, conducts research in health and in artificial intelligence. Her team member, Dr Jeffrey Hoffman, an emerging researcher, has been very interested in using virtual and augmented reality for simulation, which makes it a seamless collaboration.
She said UM had a strong history in this simulation, but the new technology they’d been developing to integrate into their curriculum provided a good opportunity to learn from them.
“The technology is extremely expensive and we had to develop this project, but we did not have the resources initially to commence the project,” said Prof Chipps.
“So there was a call from the University of Missouri in collaboration with South Africa for funded research, and Prof Knoo Lee from the University of Missouri reached out to UWC looking for partners that were interested in virtual reality, which was where Dr Hoffman and myself were eager to collaborate by adapting the open-access virtual reality cardiac arrest scenario.
“So, by using this virtual reality technology in the context that we have so far, students and staff and newly-graduated nurses will be able to discern when they are supposed to make a critical decision like when a patient is flatlining with a certain condition.
“By means of this technology students will be able to assess certain ECG patterns and take the next course of action as fast as possible by leveraging this technology, because you can now repeat in your home as many times as is necessary.”
Lahai Rois Iradukunda is an intern at UWC’s Innovation Hub and a UWC nursing graduate with a postgraduate diploma in e-skills development. He is currently doing a master’s in nursing. During the testing of the scenario, he assisted on guiding nursing students on how to navigate through VR scenarios.
“My role is to assist in bridging the theory-practice gap. By using immersive technology I believe we are on the right path, as from the feedback from the students and clinical supervisor they are all happy with the scenario and they believe it would assist the students in managing cardiac arrest,” he said.
