Using Virtual Reality to Teach Medical Students Cross-Coverage Skills

BACKGROUND: Recognizing and attempting management of patients with urgent or emergent conditions is one of the Association of American Medical Colleges Core Entrustable Professional Activities (#10) and a skill desired of new interns. However, given the acuity of these patient conditions, medical students often struggle to gain experience in these situations. Virtual reality could help fill this void while lowering costs and resources compared with high-fidelity simulation. METHODS: We converted a high-fidelity chest pain simulation case to virtual reality format utilizing short video clips filmed with a 360 -degree camera and superimposed menus of options at decision points. This virtual reality simulation was offered to fourth -year medical students during their transition to residency course in the spring of 2023. Students were offered a post -survey on the simulation. RESULTS: There were 47 fourth -year students that completed the virtual reality simulation; 41 completed the post -survey (response rate 87.2%). Over 90% of the students agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements: the virtual reality simulation was a valuable part of the transition to residency course, the virtual reality case was similar to what they will face as an intern, and they would like to have more virtual reality simulations earlier in the fourth year; 85.4% agreed or strongly agreed that the virtual reality simulation helped prepare them for the first few days of intern year. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated that virtual reality is an acceptable, cost-effective, and feasible modality to teach medical students how to recognize and attempt management of urgent clinical situations (Core Entrustable Professional Activity 10). (c) 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. center dot The American Journal of Medicine (2024) 137:454 - 458