Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Nurse Educ Today. 2023 Mar;122:105718. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105718. Epub 2023 Jan 14.
Virtual reality simulations are shown to be an effective approach for interprofessional nurse-physician communication training. However, its scalability is constrained by unequal medical-nursing cohort size, rendering a great challenge for all nursing students to form an interprofessional team with medical students. With the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), an AI medical team player can be integrated into virtual reality simulations for more nursing students to engage in interprofessional team training.
To describe the development of a novel AI-enabled virtual reality simulation (AI-enabled VRS) and to evaluate nursing students' competencies and experiences in communicating with an AI medical doctor.
A mixed-methods design using a one-group pretest-posttest design and focus group discussions were employed in the evaluation phase. Nursing students from a university were recruited to undertake the 2-hour AI-enabled VRS. Pre-test and post-tests were administered to evaluate the participants' communication knowledge and self-efficacy. Survey questionnaires were administered to examine their experiences with the virtual reality environment and the AI doctor. Five focus group discussions were conducted to gain deeper insight into their learning experiences.
The participants demonstrated significant improvements in communication knowledge and interprofessional communication self-efficacy after the learning. They reported positively on the acceptability, feasibility and usability of the AI-enabled VRS. The subscale of "human-like" feature of the AI medical doctor was rated the lowest. Three themes surrounding participants' experiences of the virtual learning emerged: "relate to the real world", "artificial intelligence versus human intelligence" and "complement with face-to-face learning".
This study demonstrates initial evidence on the potential of AI-enabled VRS in fostering nursing students' learning on interprofessional communication skills. The findings have also provided insights on how to improve the AI-enabled VRS, in particular, the expressiveness of the AI pedagogical agent and facilitating more dialogue trainings with learner-agent conversations.
虚拟现实模拟被证明是一种有效的医-护沟通培训方法。然而，由于医学和护理专业学生人数不均等，其可扩展性受到限制，这使得所有护理学生都难以与医学生组成跨专业团队。随着人工智能（AI）的发展，可以将 AI 医疗团队成员整合到虚拟现实模拟中，让更多的护理学生参与跨专业团队培训。
描述一种新的人工智能支持的虚拟现实模拟（AI 支持的 VRS）的开发，并评估护理学生与 AI 医生沟通的能力和经验。
在评估阶段采用混合方法设计，使用单组前后测设计和焦点小组讨论。从一所大学招募护理学生参加 2 小时的 AI 支持的 VRS。在测试前和测试后进行评估，以评估参与者的沟通知识和自我效能感。问卷调查评估他们对虚拟现实环境和 AI 医生的体验。进行了五次焦点小组讨论，以深入了解他们的学习体验。
参与者在学习后在沟通知识和跨专业沟通自我效能感方面有显著提高。他们对 AI 支持的 VRS 的可接受性、可行性和可用性报告给予了积极评价。AI 医生的“类人”特征子量表评分最低。参与者的虚拟学习体验有三个主题：“与现实世界相关”、“人工智能与人类智能”和“与面对面学习互补”。
本研究初步证明了 AI 支持的 VRS 在培养护理学生跨专业沟通技能方面的潜力。研究结果还提供了如何改进 AI 支持的 VRS 的见解，特别是提高 AI 教学代理的表达能力，并促进更多与学习者代理对话的对话培训。
