Nursing Science provides a specialized curriculum whose goal is to produce professional nurses, and it is oriented toward the education that is needed by them to do their profession as nurses in a clinical setting. Nurses then treat basic field traini...
Nursing Science provides a specialized curriculum whose goal is to produce professional nurses, and it is oriented toward the education that is needed by them to do their profession as nurses in a clinical setting. Nurses then treat basic field training courses in nursing as important to perform in the clinical field. The Core Fundamental Nursing Skills, which cover the essential content for nurses in clinical practice, provide 18 essential skilled protocols that determine the standardized minimum clinical performance abilities that are required from graduates. Despite the importance of a clinical practice course, however, nursing students face a situation that does not allow them enough clinical practice. Of these essential skills, injections are considered high-performance frequency and important. Since it is difficult for nursing students to give an injection to real patients as part of their training, it is replaced by field training that includes models and theater of situations. An intradermal injection is, in particular, one of the items that lacks practice opportunities due to these limitations.
Simulation-based field training is introduced to reinforce field training on intradermal injections for nurses, but there are ongoing discussions on how to supplement it due to expensive equipment and lack of immersion. As an alternative, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) of EdTech offer educators high satisfaction in safety and cost and promise high learning effects based on autonomous problem solving and easy knowledge acquisition. There field training that utilizes AR and VR technologies in the fields of nursing and medicine is increasing, but it has its share of issues, such as high initial cost, difficult technological operation, and cybersickness.
Recently, mixed reality (MR) has been gaining populatirty as a new alternative. By mixing VR with AR and delivering information based on the five senses, MR enables reinforced interactions. Based on the combination of hand tracking, voice recognition, haptics, and olfactory systems, it proposes the possibility of various interaction developments in the fields of practice, performance, experience, and training. Nebeling's six types of MR, which are the most widely used among the MR methods, choose the combination of AR and VR and have users travel between AR and VR on a single device according to their goals. These methods are effective as they offer the benefits of AR to enhance the sense of reality through the fusion of real and virtual information and, at the same time, the merits of VR to increase immersion with virtual information. Therefore, this study aims to develop an EdTech MR program that covers antibiotic dilution methods, injection methods, and performance orders in intradermal injection education as part of essential nursing skills and tests its possibilities of supplementing simulation-based practice lessons with theater of situations and models.
For this purpose, the study proceeded in four major stages. In the first stage of user surveys, the researcher examined problems and difficulties during intradermal injection education in the practice room by conducting 1:1 interviews with professors and students in the department of nursing. An online survey was conducted with 40 nursing students to identify various difficulties and problems during the intradermal injection practice lessons in the educational environment of the practice room as part of learning Core Fundamental Nursing Skills. Data was collected from the survey to find which of the 27 steps in the intradermal injection performance required education first. Then the essential items were identified and utilized as data for a prediction model.
In the second stage, a prediction model was developed based on the comparative study of Kim, J.K. & Yun, J.Y. (2023) between VR Practice Training and Lab Practice Training. The participants had higher satisfaction with VR practice as they studied Core Fundamental Nursing Skills. Their satisfaction was higher with practice in the practice room as they studied detailed hand skills. The researcher created a virtual persona for a nursing student to figure out the most important user experience in the plan of a prediction model by reflecting the results. The Function Tree step was designed by building a flow for circumstantial scenarios that users would feel as they experienced nursing skills in virtual reality first-hand. The analysis of intradermal injection scenarios shows that the participants performed diverse jobs with their hands and engaged in repetitive voice communication with their patients to check their reactions. Based on these results, two types of interaction had to be included in the MR content design. The prototype of an MR intradermal injection interaction design was organized to allow users to choose between VR and AR according to their study goals. If they chose VR, they could study the entire intradermal injection scenarios as part of their Core Fundamental Nursing Skills. If they chose AR, they could study four detailed hand skills for an intradermal injection.
In the third stage, the researcher devised a three-step approach for application. Step 1 involved an experiment to realize interaction design functions, and it was applied to a nursing instructor and a developer. In Step 2, another experiment was carried out to realize the functions of an intradermal injection scenario and drive a VR and AR system. Step 3 saw the test application of the prototype in three nursing students who took the courses on Core Fundamental Nursing Skills in their sophomore year, one clinical nurse, and one nursing instructor for minute partial revision supplementation and a higher level of completion. The voice of a standardized patient fitting the age group of the virtual patients was recorded and applied to STT. Standard data was extracted through demonstrations by a nursing professor and the capture of a clinical nurse's hand motions to maximize the presence of the prototype and the immersion of interactions.
In the last stage, the final prototype was completed and applied to a total of 85 participants, including 71 nursing students, 10 clinical nurses, and four nursing professors. The usability of the prototype was measured with a questionnaire, and the application effects of its interaction design were tested with a 1:1 interview. For an evaluation index, the study made a testing instrument with four components: Sensory Elements, Flows, Interactions, and Satisfaction with Practice based on the research questions set in the present study by considering purpose and directionality. In the survey, VR experiences were separated from AR experiences. A descriptive statistical analysis was carried out to calculate the mean and standard deviation and check the response tendency of VR experiences. Interactions scored the highest mean points at 4.24 out of 5, followed by Sensory Elements at 4.22, Satisfaction with Practice at 4.20, and Flows at 3.87, in that order. These findings imply that VR experiences involving voice interactions for virtual patients and hand gesture interactions for performance were effective for performance. In AR experiences, Satisfaction with Practice scored the highest mean points at 4.37 out of 5, followed by Sensory Elements at 4.12 and Interactions at 4.06, in that order. These findings can be explained by the importance of experiences needed in clinical practice as AR allows users to come in contact with objects in a real environment.
The study examines which of the field training choices was more effective in the Sensory aspect by comparing and analyzing the effectiveness of VR and AR experiences and found that 68 (80.0%) and 17 (20.0%) of the 85 participants chose AR and VR, respectively. These findings show their preference for AR in the Sensory aspect. They also imply that the Visual Elements of checking the practice space and the participant's hand directly with one's eyes had a huge influence on MR practice along with the Tactile Elements to hold a nursing tool with a hand and inject. The study then analyzed which of the field training choices were more effective in the Interaction aspect and found that 41 (48.2%), 42 (49.4%), and 2 (2.4%) of the entire 85 participants chose VR, AR, and VR & AR, respectively. These findings show that VR and AR were almost equal in the aspect of Interaction. They also imply that the Interaction design developed by the researcher around hand gestures and voices made a good choice with both VR and AR for users in the realization of MR. Hand gestures became a means of operation at all stages and voices became a tool of communication. There should be a further discussion about the need to develop such training and practice education with an emphasis on the Interaction aspect. In addition, the study analyzed which of the field training choices was more effective in the Flow aspect and found that 40 (47.1%), 41 (48.2%), and 4 (4.7%) chose VR, AR, and VR & AR, respectively. These findings also suggest that VR and AR were almost equal in Flow. These findings imply that AR-based practice promoted the immersion of students through their voice communication with virtual patients around the scenarios in the core nursing skills and that AR-based practice enhanced their concentration through their virtual hand gestures for nursing supplies and exchanges.
Finally, the study examined how the effectiveness of VR and AR influenced the participants' Final Satisfaction with practice and found that Interactions and Flows had significant effects on it in VR with the former having more effects than the latter. In AR, Sensory Elements and Interactions had statistically significant effects with the latter having more effects than the former. These results indicate that interaction experiences have a huge impact on the satisfaction of users in MR-based nursing practice and imply a need to reflect them first on future efforts to develop MR-based nursing practice.
This study demonstrates that MR simulations have the possibility of supplementing clinical practice and can provide educational effects close to the Simulation-based practice education level with double patients and models. The findings of the study imply that a custom interaction design based on opinions collected from the clinical field can be further applied to all fields of medicine as well as Core Fundamental Nursing Skills. The findings will hopefully contribute to the development of various interaction designs that will lead MR-based medical education simulations to innovation and promote the development of EdTech.