Queen Margaret University (QMU) in Edinburgh is going through a major paradigm shift in how they educate paramedic students by harnessing virtual reality (VR). 

The bespoke VR program was launched out of a collaboration with Virtual Reality Empathy Platform Ltd (VREP). It allows students to navigate both routine and high pressure situations in a simulated environment. This, in turn, develops the students’ real-time decision making skills and allows them to experience the consequences of their actions in real time all within the safety of the classroom.

“By supporting students through different patient scenarios, we are allowing them to learn at a pace that’s right for them and to build their understanding of different environments that paramedics work in. They also get to feel the stress that can be involved in certain situations, but to experience that in the safety of the virtual classroom,” said Alexander Williams, a paramedic lecturer at QMU.

“While VR is now used in some areas of education, this is the first VR programme which focuses on real-time decision-making in relation to maternity complications, rather than just skills development.”

The VR program developed by QMU represents a pioneering effort in the field, focusing specifically on real-time decision-making in maternity complications – an area crucial for paramedic practice but traditionally challenging to simulate in educational settings. 

“The first time I experienced the VR package, it was slightly disorienting because it was so real and I got so invested in the scenario that when someone spoke to me outside the VR headset, I got a fright,” said Bronte Haywood, a paramedic student. 

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Having now developed and trialled the VR packages over the last year, QMU will be running a range of VR scenarios with students on the BSc Paramedic Science course going forward, where they will be able to deal with pregnant women with pre-eclampsia, a female with maternal sepsis, a baby with shoulder distortia dystocia (stuck in birth canal) and a woman with postpartum haemorrhaging. 

“It adds a different dimension to our learning process and is particularly helpful to those of us who are visual learners. Using VR alongside skills classes will help to strengthen muscle memory, making us more confident and competent in dealing with different types of scenarios – some of which we may not come across on a regular basis, but which could be life and death situations in the real world,” said another Lisa Fernie, paramedic science student.