Introduction: Many healthcare and educational institutions are tasked with ensuring competency across all equipment and situations required to provide care; for the most complex of instruments, which usually require a substantial amount of training, it may not be feasible to perform repeated simulation training on physical equipment, and even when feasible can be costly in terms of expendables utilized. Virtual reality (VR) provides several avenues to enhance the acquisition and sustainment of knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, one of the largest technical complications is the implementation of complicated medical tools into virtual environments. These tools vary largely in scope, form, function, and scale. While unlimited time, platform capability, and resources would allow for more realistic adaptations, current technology and capacity require a fine balance between learning objectives and functional fidelity.
Description: To illustrate the complications that accompany tool creation, we discuss the creation of a novel virtual anesthesia machine on a commercial VR platform. An anesthesia machine is a tool commonly implemented in the operating room to facilitate anesthesia, airway, and breathing requirements during surgical procedures. In traditional simulation, anesthesia machines are not commonly implemented due to their cost-prohibitive nature and the lack of manikins that would allow for true physiological feedback. VR offers virtual environments and patients, making it an ideal platform on which to build an anesthesia machine training module. To implement this proof-of-concept, an interdisciplinary team of educators, doctors, allied health professionals, and VR design and implementation specialists worked to define the desired functionality, including inhaled anesthetic administration, ventilator management, and bag-valve-mask capability. The team then incorporated input from internal and external subject matter experts to detail the functionality required to enable these high-level capabilities to support surgical medical simulation training. The design specialists worked with art and development experts to create the required visual and auditory assets as well as implement underlying functionality to meet the required learning objectives.
Discussion: This anesthesia functionality was incorporated into one scenario designed to train Registered Nurse Anesthesia students about potential complications of prolonged paralysis. Future iterations and improvements will involve increasing levels of fidelity which will allow for a wider range of learners and a more broad case availability. The implemented anesthesia machine demonstrates a design and implementation approach that can be extended to additional tools with complex functionality, allowing future learners to increase their understanding and familiarity of these instruments with minimal space, time, and equipment requirements.
@inproceedings{poppe2024virtualizing,
author = {Poppe, M. A. and Barrie, M. and Patel, N. and Ribeira, J. and Weiss, T. and Mallon, P. and Carr, N. and Polson, J. and Ribeira, R. J. and Sarma, K. V.},
title = {Virtualizing Complex Medical Equipment: Building a Functional Anesthesia Machine in VR},
booktitle = {Society for Simulation in Europe Annual Meeting},
year = {2024},
}