VR in Surgical Training: what you Need to know

Virtual reality surgery training provides a safe and controlled environment, where surgeons and trainees can improve their skills.

What is virtual reality surgery training?

Virtual reality surgery training is the artificial simulation of life-like scenarios of surgical procedures. It replaces an in-person learning experience with a digital, interactive, and immersive learning experience.

VR surgery training is a 3D simulation of a real surgical simulation scenario.

The 5 Benefits of VR Surgery Training:

1. Immersive experience with VR surgery training

2. Realistic practice in a safe environment

3. Skills acquisition

4. Repetition

5. Evaluation of performance

01. Immersive experience

A realistic environment is vital for soft skills and procedural training. PWC found that learners were 3.75 times more emotionally connected with training content when it was delivered within a virtual environment.

02. Realistic practice in a safe environment

In virtual reality, you are free to make mistakes without consequences. This ensures that trainees are better prepared and have more self-confidence when they put what they have learned into practice.

03. Skills acquisition

Immersive training experiences help people learn faster. When learners are fully engaged physically and emotionally, they retain more information, for longer.

04. Repetition

Learners can repeat these virtual tasks, building muscle memory that helps with the retention of learning, which can then be implemented in real life.

For example, healthcare practitioners can gain the chance to learn and practice intricate surgical procedures in a risk-free environment, ultimately leading to better patient care.

05. Evaluation of performance

The digital nature of VR training captures data in real-time. This can provide in-the-moment feedback to trainees, as well as large-scale impact analysis, which quickly provides results to senior surgeons.

Virtual Reality training offers various opportunities to collect data. The duration, sequence, and number of errors are logical data points. However, in a virtual environment, things like tracking are also possible, where viewing direction or hand movements are followed.

You can use these unique data sets to improve your learning, but also to implement improvements in the operating room.

Data can also be analyzed in real time. This allows the VR training to be tailored to individual users.

Think for example of reducing or increasing the complexity or the pace of the training. Giving recommendations to a user based on previous performance is also a possibility.

The 3 Disadvantages of VR Surgery Training

1. Motion sickness

2. Lack of real feedback

3. Lack of simulation of surgical procedures in particular specialties.

Virtual reality offers unique, engaging, and fun ways to train in a safe, but realistic environment.

Using the headset and controllers, trainees look, speak, and move about freely in a 3D virtual setting, interacting with simulated real-world tools, machinery, and other trainees and instructors.