UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth has renovated its simulation center to include virtual reality training. The $6.75 million project makes UNT Health Science Center the first in Texas to use "immersive virtual reality."
The center can create exam rooms, emergency rooms, and operating rooms. One suite is designed to look like the inside of a home. Rooms and equipment can be adjusted to look like someone is treating a patient outside. The center includes "life-like simulation mannequins."
Karen Meadows, director of the HSC Regional Simulation Center, says virtual reality can give students more experience with issues they may face when they leave school.
"We can start injecting interruptions that happen in real life, noise that happens," Meadows said. "Maybe that makes it harder to hear or interpersonal conflicts, those kinds of things we have to deal with in real-life sometimes."
Fourth year student Amogh Krishnagiri says the simulation center and virtual reality can give experience communicating in a stressful environment.
"At the end of the day, when we're taking care of patients, it's about putting those facts together to help make that patient's life better," Krishnagiri said.
Krishnagiri completed an emergency medicine rotation and says the use of virtual reality can also help students prepare for situations where doctors and paramedics will have to exchange information quickly, and the patient's condition might change rapidly.
"The shock factor isn't there," Krishnagiri said. "It's a bridge, really. You're never ready for the first crazy thing you see or the first day in the ER, but training like this makes it that much easier."
In July, Meadows says the Regional Simulation Center will open to hospitals and paramedics to work on continued training and communication across disciplines.
"Any place I can take a 360 camera, I can capture that image," Meadows said. "I can go to another place's facility, capture that image, display it here in our simulation room for training room purposes, and it still feels like their home environment."
UNT Health Science Center says the simulation team is trained by the Harvard University Center for Medical Simulation, which was one of the first in the world.
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