Medical educators use Enduvo virtual reality immersive training to offer experiential learning to students.

One of the biggest challenges training medical students is providing the opportunity to get hands-on, real-life experiences that result in engagement, confidence and mastery in the care of critically-ill patients. This challenge has increased in the era of COVID-19 as a result of the changing landscape of medical student training.

Dr. Teresa Riech, pediatric emergency department Medical Director at OSF at Peoria, and Dr. Matthew Bramlet, Pediatric Cardiologist at Children’s Hospital of Illinois, University of Illinois College of Medicine, along with their clinical colleagues, shared a poster presentation at the Association of American Medical Colleges 2020 Annual Meeting. Their research investigates the use of the Enduvo virtual reality technology as a training tool by medical students to better diagnose critically ill patients.

Using Enduvo, researchers created two virtual reality scenarios for students to interact at their own pace while listening to the built-in learning modules. Students were observed, revealing that they were less distracted and more engaged in the lesson, compared to a traditional classroom lecture. Students also spent additional time in the Enduvo learning environment, an option not available with a lecture.

“There is a real value in experiential learning and with today’s reality, COVID-19 makes it very challenging to connect medical students, and in some cases medical residents, with real-life scenarios to test their ability to assess patients and make critically important decisions about their care,” according to Dr. Riech.

Learners were also asked to rate the Enduvo VR experience as equal to, the same or better than a traditional lecture. 55% of students found the experience superior to a traditional lecture while the remaining 45% of students found it equal. Additionally, only 5% of students expressed complete confidence in their ability to assess and provide the right treatment with a classroom lecture, while 45% of students reported complete confidence using Enduvo.

Enduvo’s immersive training platform offers content-rich, interactive, and real-life experiences for students that leads to improved confidence and engagement. Additionally, the no-code content authoring technology makes it easy to quickly create immersive content during highly dynamic times such as COVID-19 and to deliver it in compliance with social distancing guidelines.

Dr. Matthew Bramlet is the founder and a board member of Enduvo. Dr. Teresa Riech is a medical and military training advisor for Enduvo.