About Project

The European healthcare system is facing a severe crisis due to shortage of nurses. This issue was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to be a major challenge with the demographic shift, since the retiring workforce is not renewed enough to meet the rising demand of an aged population (OECD, 2024). OECD identifies increasing education and training opportunities and optimizing the skill mix, including digital technologies and AI, as ways to address this challenge. EC aims to close the digital skills gap in health and care sectors (Digital Skills for Digital Transformation of Health and Care System – DG Reform). Some recent studies compile the supporting evidence of the benefits of XR as a teaching tool in nursing education (Souza-Nykänen & Semenchenko, 2020; Hu et al., 2023; Aikawa et al. 2024; Lee et al. 2024, Woodall et al, 2024; Ota et al, 2024).

Among all modalities, VR is the one with the most documented potential and benefit for nursing or healthcare-related education. Simulations of clinical situations serve as an effective practice tool that allows students to gain more confidence in their skills and reduce risks of clinical mistakes as well as to practice emotional, cognitive and interpersonal skills (Silva, 2024).
In this sense, VR based on 360º videos has been proposed as an affordable tool with no requirement of high digital skills or knowledge on 3D modeling or software programming.
Analyses like Aebersold and Dunbar (2021) conclude that XR technologies should take part in the curriculum in nursing education and that they have evident educational benefits such as their experiential nature, engagement and immersion capacity, as well as their flexibility and scalability. Additionally, VR training can increase engagement and satisfaction among students, thus improving retention (Silva, 2024).

Healthcare education has witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of extended reality, but there is limited evidence that conceptual frameworks are being effectively employed in the design and implementation of XR (Salcedo et al, 2022).

The main goal of this project is to create a human centered design methodology to guide nursing educators in the creation of XR based learning materials in which patients’ and students’ needs are in the center. Moreover, a set of 20 XR learning experiences for nurses will be created, which will improve their adoption EU-wide and bring better quality services in the field without the dependency on supporting technical departments.