Virtual Reality Simulation for Undergraduate Nursing Students for Care of Patients With Infectious Diseases: Mixed Methods Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Virtual reality simulation (VRS) teaching offers nursing students a safe, immersive learning environment with immediate feedback, enhancing learning outcomes. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing students had limited training and opportunities to care for patients in isolation units with infectious diseases. However, the pandemic highlighted the ongoing global priority of providing care for patients with infectious diseases. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to (1) examine the effectiveness of VRS in preparing nursing students to care for patients with infectious diseases by assessing its impact on their theoretical knowledge, learning motivation, and attitudes; and (2) evaluate their experiences with VRS. METHODS: This 2-phased mixed methods study recruited third-year undergraduate nursing students enrolled in the Integrated Emergency and Critical Care course at a university in Taiwan. Phase 1 used a quasi-experimental design to address objective 1 by comparing the learning outcomes of students in the VRS teaching program (experimental group) with those in the traditional teaching program (control group). Tools included an infection control written test, the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey, and a learning attitude questionnaire. The experimental group participated in a VRS lesson titled "Caring for a Patient with COVID-19 in the Negative Pressure Unit" as part of the infection control unit. In phase 2, semistructured interviews were conducted to address objective 2, exploring students' learning experiences. RESULTS: =2.30; P=.02) at T1. Additionally, the VRS group demonstrated a statistically significant higher regression coefficient for learning confidence compared with the control group (β=.29; P=.03). The students' learning experiences in the VRS group were categorized into 4 themes: Applying Professional Knowledge to Patient Care, Enhancing Infection Control Skills, Demonstrating Patient Care Confidence, and Engaging in Real Clinical Cases. The core theme identified was Strengthening Clinical Patient Care Competencies. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that VRS teaching significantly enhanced undergraduate nursing students' infection control knowledge, learning attention, and confidence. Qualitative insights reinforced the quantitative results, highlighting the holistic benefits of VRS teaching in nursing education, including improved learning outcomes. The positive impact on student motivation and attitudes indicates a potentially transformative approach to nursing education, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era, where digital and remote learning tools play an increasingly vital role.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".