Published February 20, 2025
The Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation (YCHS) now has a virtual reality (VR) platform to support nursing education and interprofessional simulations for physicians, nurses, technicians and medical and physician assistant students.
“VR provides interprofessional training without requiring everyone to be in the same room,” said Leigh Evans, MD, executive director, YCHS. “Removing clinicians from the bedside for training can be difficult. With VR, we can train clinicians throughout Yale New Haven Health System and the state.”
Because clinicians all receive similar training, VR helps promote Yale New Haven Health’s Care Signature. Other advantages include realistic training, particularly for “patient unfolding cases,” in which a patient’s condition evolves. VR offers additional resources and simulation tools to help train clinicians to meet specific Joint Commission standards and could be used to collect safety and quality data and provide training to improve safety outcomes.
VR can be an engaging resource to support graduate nurse training, said Cheryl Thomas, RN, nursing professional development specialist.
“Our hope is to use VR to do more than just orient a nurse,” she said. “It allows the care team to train and grow together in a convenient space.”
VR can help new nurses identify gaps in care and early changes in patients’ conditions and medication needs. In addition, it can simulate unique complications such as chest tube problems, diabetes and tracheostomy issues, neurologic changes and more.
“VR training also provides the opportunity for outreach to high school students, engaging them in health care sooner,” said Samreen Vora, MD, assistant professor of Emergency Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and high school student advisor, YCHS. “VR helps promote hands-on training in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs and aligns with the mission for our Simulation Academy at Yale at YCHS.”
