What does an emergency room (ER) bring to mind? A fast-paced environment where medical professionals move around quickly and decisively, making life-or-death decisions daily. Now, imagine plunging students into the midst of the action. It’s sink or swim time for these students, who don’t have the luxury to ease themselves into the stressful ER environment.
Students need field experience, and the ER is used as a training ground to give them first-hand experience. And how are the students prepared for their foray into this reality? Usually, by way of a classroom simulation where students and faculty act out ER scenarios. That is, up until now. Students will soon have access to something much better — a 360-degree immersive experience that will make them feel they are actually in the ER without being physically there.
Petra Williams, a professor of physical therapy at Northern Arizona University (NAU), and her husband Eric Williams, an associate professor of Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies and co-creator of the Immersive Media Initiative, have teamed up to find a better solution to prepare students for clinical work.
The Immersive Media Initiative was awarded an $878,000 grant from the Ohio University Innovations Strategy Funds in February 2016 to develop virtual and augmented reality in various academic programs. The initiative was then expanded to include Petra Williams’ work as well as other academics and clinicians in the U.S., who also aim to prepare future health care professionals for clinical experience through the use of 360-degree immersive virtual reality.
The Williamses use 360-degree video cameras and audio equipment to capture all that’s going on in an emergency room, including “doctors yelling, computers beeping, patients bleeding and in pain as health care providers work on them.” The fist-sized cameras are placed at eye level, so student users feel they are part of the action, not merely an observer.
The Williamses call their immersive experience “preality,” or a preparation for reality. The situation is real, and involves places that students will actually be working in, so student users feel they’ve lived the experience even though they are not physically present.
“Once you’re in it, it’s like you’re right there,” Petra Williams told TUN.
“People come out of it and think, ‘I just watched all of that.’ It helps to prepare for the emotional part of this environment.”
The Williamses have filmed only what’s happening in ERs so far, but they plan to start filming in intensive care units (ICUs) this fall. They hope that the immersive experience, which feels so real, will better prepare students for their clinical experience.
“The thought is that, when students are actually in the ICU, the situation will be familiar and less scary, thus reducing the time they need to acclimate to be ready to learn,” Petra Williams said in a statement.
“It would give them a chance to watch and observe the actual clinic site without the pressure of having to be responsible for things or being in the way. They can ask what’s going on with this line, why is this person breathing that way. It gives them a chance to stare without being caught staring.”
What inspired the Williamses to use 360-degree approach to bring immersive experience to students?
TUN spoke with Petra Williams to find out.
The answer lies in the Williamses finding computer-generated virtual environment wanting. While virtual reality based on computer simulation is useful for many purposes in health care, such as examining the body or the heart, or going through a simulated surgery, it’s not real.
“But it’s all simulation—a projection of what a situation could be like. And it’s not in a real room with real equipment and real stress,” Petra Williams said.
The use of a 360-degree camera, however, allows the Williamses “to film what’s happening in a real health care emergency, so the virtual reality participant will see the rushing around, hear the sounds, see live people doing work,” she said.
Moreover, the students using the preality immersive experience will be training in the same hospitals where the virtual reality is recorded, so what they see in the virtual world is the same world they will be working in when they start their clinical work. They will thus be familiar with the ER or the ICU’s setting, even though they’ve never been there before.
The Williamses also use 4-way microphones, which further emphasizes the reality of the experience. If a machine to the virtual reality participants’ left starts beeping, they will hear it on their left side. Their vision of the room will also change if they turn left to the source of the sound. That’s as close to reality as the students can get without being physically present there.
Petra Williams is hopeful that students, including physical therapy students, will find the 360-degree immersive experience helpful in transitioning from the classroom to the clinical environment.
“Whenever I meet a new class I think about the patients they’ll be responsible for three years from now,” she told TUN.
“The chance to be by somebody’s bedside—if they can experience that before they have to actually stand there, it could help to prepare them in a profound way.”
Petra and Eric Williams presented their preality immersive technology at the Virtual Reality and Healthcare Symposium in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. They have reported interest from around the country on the implementation of their technology in health care provider training.
