Province funds virtual reality training for UNB nursing school
Training will allow students to refine skills before trying them in real life
Starting this September, virtual reality training technology will be incorporated into nursing students' curriculums at the University of New Brunswick.
The province is providing $500,000 over three years to cover the equipment and setup costs.
Fourteen virtual reality stations will be set up at UNB's Fredericton and Moncton campuses.
"We need to re-imagine how nursing is taught and practiced in our current health-care systems," said Health Minister John Dornan at a press conference at UNB Fredericton.
"This will help future nurses be even more prepared when they join the nursing workforce."
Dornan likened the nursing VR simulators to flight simulators used to train pilots.
"Can you imagine pilots without simulators? Imagine the first time a pilot takes a flight or learns how to work. He's in the air at 20,000 feet," Dornan said.
"We're realizing that simulation exposes students to what they might see in the field."
Dornan said VR will allow students to acquire and refine their skills in a safe environment before applying them in a real-life clinical environment.
"Imagine if we could only graduate a nurse once they had seen all the potential scenarios that unfold before them," Dornan said.
"Now we expose them to that. It's not real life, but boy, it's the next best thing."
He added that UNB will work with both Horizon Health and Shannex on the models to ensure they align with current best practices.
Don Leidl, an assistant professor of nursing at UNB, said what sets apart the VR programming is that UNB now has the capacity to create new learning models on their own.
"Nurses building tools for nurses to educate nurses. This is something we should be very proud of," Leidl said.
"We're going to be able to do things that other programs in Canada and across the world are only going to be dreaming about."
This is not the first time UNB has used the technology
Lorna Butler, dean of the nursing faculty at UNB, said the initial goal of using the technology was to provide access for students who were unable to come to campus.
But now with a more broad use of the technology this fall, Butler said it would allow for an "immersive real-life experience that is safe to make mistakes and to try again, to think and problem solve with faculty who are experts in their field."
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