By Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
Simulations and serious games have been employed for many years in the health industry. Because role-playing, labs, and clinicals have been a part of nursing and health education from the inception of teaching programs at hospitals, it has been a natural step to create CD-ROM simulations and to use videos and multimedia. However, the flaw that all have is that they are not as adaptive nor as dynamic as real-time, synchronous role-play. The advent of workable virtual worlds that truly accommodate multiple users and are able to replicate the complexity of a real emergency room or even a home health care situation has the potential to revolutionize nursing and allied health education.
It could also be used for training home health care workers or family members entrusted with elderly, disabled, or chronically ill relatives who are cared for at home.
John Miller, R.N. a nursing instructor in Tacoma, Washington at Tacoma Community College has developed a number of islands or worlds in Second Life in which nursing students can role-play in real-life settings. With demonstrations on the Web, the simulations show the power of Second Life to help students gain an appreciation of the decisions that must be made quickly in the health care industry, and also an idea of the kinds of knowledge needed and how one will be required to be able to process the information. Miller's YouTube channel is quite interesting because it allows one to take a look at how he has used Second Life in nursing education.
Nursing in Second Life
Chest Pain
Demo 1:
Starting an IV
Demo 2:
Defibrillator
Demo 3:
More Defibrillation/evaluating the patient
Demo 4:
Visiting Centralia College's Second Life island Resources (links to locations on the Web — model of the liver, etc.)
Demo 5:
Interactive Objects:
Example - the Vertebra/stacking vertebrae
G4H Conference (Games for Health) — May 2008 — previews
A Game with Bugs: Designing a Game About Malaria Prevention Practices
Sim Surgery at Renssalaer Polytechnic
Virtual Worlds in Health Education
Dartmouth College's Synthetic Environments for Emergency Response Simulation is a virtual prototyping experiment funded by the Department of Homeland Security. It is an immersive multiuser environment to train emergency responders.
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Institute of Rural Health Idaho State University is using a multiuser immersive environment to host virtual table top exercises in bioterrorism awareness and preparedness educational programs.
Training in a large scale massive virtual environment. Our attraction to virtual environments as a learning platform is that they provide opportunities for problem based learning and experiential learning.We will be using a customizable massive online multiplayer environment SecondLife™ to host virtual table top exercises for the NIMS, ICS and HEICS courses. This is because of its relatively low access cost and its ability to handle dynamic content seamlessly (Figure 1). This environment is ideal for a large number of participants to role play disaster scenarios that are designed rapidly by non-programmers using menu driven tools. The SecondLife™ environment is poised to revolutionize the way virtual environments are created and used for training purposes.
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The Centers for Disease Control has set up its first test site for sharing public health information in an online, cyber community. Meet Hygeia Philo (lover of health), a virtual public health worker.
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Genetics in Second Life is a site created just this April by Bertalan Meskó, a medical student at the University of Debrecen.
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Harvard University's River City Project is a virtual multiuser environment designed to teach middle school kids about disease transmission and the scientific method.
As visitors to River City, students travel back in time, bringing their 21st century skills and technology to address 19th century problems. Based on authentic historical, sociological, and geographical conditions, River City is a town besieged with health problems. Students work together in small research teams to help the town understand why residents are becoming ill. Students use technology to keep track of clues that hint at causes of illnesses, form and test hypotheses, develop controlled experiments to test their hypotheses, and make recommendations based on the data they collect, all in an online environment.
The Future
As soon as many of the technical and access issues are ironed out, it is likely that education via virtual worlds will become more important, particularly in developing a learning community, discussions, role-playing, labs, simulations and/or skills-building. As more people are able to participate, we'll see changes. Content will no longer be imposed on learners, but will rise up through learner groups in a kind of grassroots movement. The future is exciting!
Watch the related video produced by Dr. Nash: Leadership Choices