Virtual pharyngeal swab

Traditionally, new staff members are trained by the experienced staff, but it requires a lot of the existing staff’s professional and social competencies when the department’s usual operational tasks have to be attended to at the same time as new staff members have to be welcomed and trained in a proper way, possibly in a whole new field of work.

By means of Virtual Reality (VR), the training can take place in a virtual environment where the procedure can be practised again and again without risk and where the staff can make errors without consequences, which creates a sense of security for both patients and staff.

AIM

The primary aim was to develop and test if it was possible to simulate the technique of pharyngeal swabs by the means of a practical and realistic 3D Virtual Reality environment. Secondly, to examine the possibility of VR being a supplement to the education and further skill development of the healthcare staff.

The VR scenario was developed with a basis in the existing procedure and was carried out by both experienced and inexperienced staff in order to obtain a realistic and correct walk-through of the procedure, which should be both intuitive and inspiring for the untrained staff. The staff would become profesionally prepared through the virtual environment and would be guided throughout the testing.

Virtual Pharyngeal Swab was developed with a view to correctly execute pharyngeal swabs in the covid-19 test centers, but would also be usable for other infections discovered by the means of pharyngeal swabs. The developed VR environment would therefore be usable in training at all hospitals and test centres in Denmark in the future.

RESULTS

Both healthcare professionals and non-clinically trained staff agree that there is potential in using the VR Trainer when introducing new staff to the procedures, and that it will be a good ballast to have practiced in a VR environment before swabbing an actual patient. The training can supplement but not replace peer training from experienced staff, and VR Trainer must be further developed so that the training situation appears more realistic.

PARTNERS

The project was completed at the Department of ORL – Head & Neck Surgery at Odense University Hospital.

EXTERNAL FUNDING

The project was funded by the OUH Innovation fund.

Wacky Studio has made Virtual Pharyngeal Swab a part of their VR Trainer platform to be used for training clinical procedures.