Mennonite College of Nursing Expands Simulation Offerings With Immersive Virtual Reality

‍Expanded simulation lab

“We have a really robust in-person simulation program, but we moved some of our scenarios from our simulation lab into virtual reality. We can move students through virtual reality so much faster without all the extensive expenses of the equipment and paying actors and without the teardown time. So that’s fantastic.”

Realistic scenarios

“When we really want something to look very realistic like the patients decompensating, they have coarse lung sounds, and they’re diaphoretic, all of those clinical signs. You can do that a lot more realistically in UbiSim. I also have really awesome, very expensive mannequins that do these things, but it's a blue light in their mouth. UbiSim is much more realistic. That’s really important for our learners.”

Intuitive Editor

“I love the Editor. We use a lot of the maternal infant simulations. We tailored a few of them to our needs using the Editor, but we also use the ones that are provided.”

Psychological Safety

“I think psychological safety is a perk of serious gaming in education. While there is learning happening, the students have a sense that they’re not going to kill their patients. They can make mistakes and repeat the process. That's been good feedback from the students because I learned that they feel safer in virtual reality.”

Student feedback

“The results from student surveys are that UbiSim has been a really positive experience. We're just starting to measure learning outcomes, but anecdotally, we have strong feedback for not only the software but also our group debriefing that we do after the simulation sessions.”

Training on High-acuity, low-occurrence events (HALO)

"Students can go into their clinicals, but they might not experience certain kinds of patient situations. We use the simulations UbiSim has developed because nursing students may not ever see preeclampsia or preterm labor, but in virtual reality, they can practice.”

Connecting to clinical experience

“They like the autonomy and how quickly things unfold. They really get to see that their patient had a condition, they intervened, and that’s how that plays out in real life. So I think they’re making those connections easier in real life or in clinical.”

‍Benefits of debrief

“We pre-brief per INACSL guidelines, then we let them run the simulation, debrief, and evaluate each other. Then we bring them together as a group, we run through each scenario for a more established debrief with a faculty member. Debrief is where they really reflect and begin to truly understand and know what to do next time.”