Nursing XR – A VR application to teach decision making to student nurses

This paper contributes to the subject of game-based learning by validating an approach to design and develop gamified VR applications that are integrated into the curricula and address fundamental students’ needs. To accomplish this, a case study describing the process undertaken to create Nursing XR, a VR application focused on a wound dressing scenario for injured patients recently discharged into their home from hospital with associated risk assessment and decision-making tasks, is described. The aim of the application is to support nursing students in developing their communication, risk assessment skills, holistic assessment, and person-centred clinical decisions.

To create Nursing XR, needs and initial requirements were collected via a workshop with student nurses enrolled on the BSc Adult and Mental Health nursing at the University of the West of Scotland. The workshop, which involved 10 student nurses and two lecturers in nursing from two Universities (Co-Is) and was led by the PI, supported by the learning technologist and the head developer of the company used for development of the software. A thematic analysis of the data collected in the workshop, identified two major needs for the students: the need to undertake practical applications of the procedures learned in the lectures and the need to build confidence in the skills required of a nursing student. These needs were the foundations for the design process, which followed an artefact-based approach. The artefacts generated during the design were also used to elicit additional interaction and software requirements from the nursing lecturers. An iterative lean development process was followed by the company for the software implementation. Throughout development, students and lecturers were involved as user testes ensuring that the user experience of the application was satisfactory, and the application fit for purpose.

In this paper, we describe the high-level design and development process followed by the multidisciplinary team to develop Nurse XR and report initial qualitative findings from the workshop focus group.