Brings More Reality Than Ever to EMS Education With Expansive Feature Set.
Columbus, OH, - VRpatients, a virtual reality simulation training platform, successfully launched its most robust enhancements to date, adding dozens more options for instructors to train, assess and recertify first responders and practitioners in EMS, nursing, and the military.
“We listened to everyone who gave us input – from current customers to Medical Directors – for some of the country’s most recognized healthcare organizations, and we prioritized the input to determine what enhancements needed to be added,” said Tom Cox, a former EMS Paramedic/Training Director and currently the Director of EMS Sales for VRpatients. “The result is the most realistic, flexible, and robust virtual [or online] simulation application platform available in the industry,” he added.
The new software update includes:
- More than 2,800 new art assets, including moulage that can be placed anywhere on the body with varying patterns and severity. Examples include abdominal distension, otorrhea, peripheral edema, along with a variety of stabbings, gunshot wounds, contusions, lacerations, burns, & avulsions.
- 13 different skin conditions, including pale, jaundice, & diaphoresis
- A variety of interventions, including dressings, chest seals, & tourniquets
- A spinal assessment
- Units of measurement for administering medications
- Enhanced dialogue system to include:
- Unsolicited Dialogue - Patients can be programmed to say things unprovoked, like “I hate needles” as the student establishes an IV.
- Calls - Users can now call external resources & decide who is available for your student to call while on scene.
- Commands - When the user gives the patient a directive or set of instructions, a programmed response is triggered, such as an animation.
- Ability to lengthen the clinical case timer up to two hours.
These additions to the case logic allow instructors to dictate what a student should or shouldn’t do, set critical fails and assign point values to the grading system.
“This is the closest thing to real life you can find in any training,” said Cox. “If you look at our simulations, our patients, the environments, and the look and feel of the program, it’s the most real thing I’ve seen in my 40-year career. We are making it as authentic for users as we can,” he added.
Using the platform’s case authoring tool or one of the pre-built, commonly occurring clinical case scenarios provided, users assign a clinical case scenario to a student, based on the skill or protocol they wish the student to learn. Educators are able to immediately assess students in a realistic, real-time virtual environment that is both repeatable and replicable.
“We have been watching AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) grow in healthcare simulation, and we were hesitant at first because everything we saw was either for nursing or military,” said Robert Victorino, PCC’s Paramedic and Clinical Coordinator. “We quickly found that with COVID, VRpatients was the perfect solution to deliver the same content to students in a format that was safe for learning,” he added.
VRpatients is not intended to replace faculty or didactic/skills-based learning models, but rather augment existing curriculums with a method to which modern learners are accustomed. It also provides the ability to train practitioners on high risk, low occurring cases where many life-threatening errors could occur without adequate training.
“VRpatients puts educators and their institutions, agencies and other training programs at the cutting edge of learning,” said Suzette Robinson, General Manager of VRpatients. “Educators realize they must adapt to younger learning preferences in order to stay relevant and be able to pivot quickly to unplanned, and even unprecedented circumstances like Covid. It’s truly real life training without real life consequences,” she added.
VRpatients is available as a web-based version (with no headset required), and in full immersive virtual reality via the Oculus, Pico or HTC Vive VR headsets. Some users begin with the desktop version, then move to the VR headset, and finally to the live training for the same case. Subscription-based options are flexible, based on the organization’s need. Visit www.vrpatients.com for more information or to schedule a live demo.