Implementing Immersive Virtual Reality for Prelicensure Nursing Students
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Immersive virtual reality (IVR) is an emerging technology in nursing education. IVR is an effective tool for improving knowledge, skills, and problem-solving abilities in nursing education (Hsieh, 2025). IVR has potential to facilitate learning, complement current educational approaches, and provide nurse educators with novel and engaging means of content delivery (Saab et al., 2021). It is important to understand the curriculum, the objectives of the IVR scenarios, necessity of feasibility testing, and the technology resources that IVR requires (Collier, et al., 2023). When implementing IVR in nursing education, facilitators should plan for the knowledge level of the students, use leveling when developing scenarios, develop applicable content, ensure student onboarding and orientation, and track student performance (Brown et al., 2023). Further evidence regarding implementing IVR in nursing education is needed to understand more about preparing new users for this technology or how to use this technology in a new way, navigating challenges and problem solving, and practices that promote success. This presentation will share our experiences with planning, preparation, and implementation of IVR for prelicensure nursing students. We will discuss the considerations when starting an IVR program, how we prepared for implementing this new technology in the simulation lab, navigating the software, and how we prepared students for IVR experiences. We will discuss first semester prelicensure nursing student experiences with IVR and share findings from our pilot study comparing IVR with high-fidelity simulation in relation to student outcomes of medication administration competency and clinical judgment.
