Lau Justine, Dunn Nicholas, Qu Marianna, Preyra Rebecca, Chan Teresa M
Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences McMaster University Hamilton Ontario Canada.
School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences Queen's University Kingston Ontario Canada.
AEM Educ Train. 2025 Jan 11;9(1):e11058. doi: 10.1002/aet2.11058. eCollection 2025 Feb.
The concept of the metaverse is a virtual world that immerses users, allowing them to interact with the digital environment. Due to metaverse's utility in collaborative and immersive simulation, it can be advantageous for medical education in high-stakes care settings such as emergency, critical, and acute care. Consequently, there has been a growth in educational metaverse use, which has yet to be characterized alongside other simulation modalities literature. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of all research describing metaverse use in education for emergency, critical, and acute care.
We used Arksey and O'Malley's framework with the Levac et al. modifications to conduct a scoping review by searching these five databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIC, Web of Science, and Education Source). The framework comprises six steps: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant literature; (3) study selection; (4) data extraction; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting data; and (6) consultation with key informants. Relevant themes and trends were extracted and mapped for reporting.
The search yielded 8175 citations, which ultimately led to data extraction from 65 articles. Studies evaluated metaverse programs for the learning and assessment of both technical skills (management of code blue, sepsis, stroke, etc.) and nontechnical skills (e.g., interprofessional collaboration, communication, critical decision making). Barriers to metaverse implementation include technical challenges and difficulty evaluating educational effectiveness.
The results of this scoping review highlight the current applications of metaverse as an educational tool, its identified strengths and weaknesses, and further comparison between metaverse and other educational modalities such as high-fidelity simulation. This work provides direction for future primary and secondary research that can aid educational programmers and curriculum planners in maximizing metaverse potential in emergency, critical, and acute medical education.
元宇宙的概念是一个让用户沉浸其中，使其能够与数字环境进行交互的虚拟世界。由于元宇宙在协作和沉浸式模拟方面的效用，它对于急诊、重症和急性护理等高风险护理环境中的医学教育可能具有优势。因此，教育领域对元宇宙的使用有所增加，但尚未与其他模拟方式的文献一同进行特征描述。本范围综述旨在全面概述所有描述元宇宙在急诊、重症和急性护理教育中的应用的研究。
我们采用了阿克西和奥马利的框架，并结合莱瓦克等人的修改意见，通过搜索这五个数据库（医学文献数据库、荷兰医学文摘数据库、教育资源信息中心数据库、科学引文索引数据库和教育源数据库）来进行范围综述。该框架包括六个步骤：（1）确定研究问题；（2）识别相关文献；（3）研究选择；（4）数据提取；（5）整理、总结和报告数据；（6）与关键信息提供者进行磋商。提取并梳理相关主题和趋势以进行报告。
搜索共获得8175条引文，最终从65篇文章中提取了数据。研究评估了元宇宙项目在技术技能（心肺复苏、脓毒症、中风等的管理）和非技术技能（如跨专业协作、沟通、关键决策）的学习和评估方面的应用。元宇宙实施的障碍包括技术挑战和难以评估教育效果。
本范围综述的结果突出了元宇宙作为一种教育工具的当前应用、已确定的优势和劣势，以及元宇宙与其他教育方式（如高保真模拟）之间的进一步比较。这项工作为未来的初级和次级研究提供了方向，有助于教育规划者和课程规划者在急诊、重症和急性医学教育中最大限度地发挥元宇宙的潜力。
