Sok Ying LIAW1*, Jian Zhi TAN1, Khairul Dzakirin Bin Rusli1, Rabindra RATAN2, Wentao ZHOU1, Siriwan LIM1, Tang Ching LAU3, Betsy SEAH1, and Wei Ling CHUA1
1Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies
2Department of Media & Information, Michigan State University
3Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Liaw, S. Y., Tan, J. Z., Khairul Dzakirin Rusli, Ratan, R., Zhou, W., Lim, S., Lau, T. C., Seah, B., & Chua, W. L. (2023). Is artificial intelligence better than human-controlled doctor for virtual reality interprofessional simulation training [Poster presentation]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/is-artificial-intelligence-better-than-human-controlled-doctor-for-virtual-reality-interprofessional-simulation-training/
SUB-THEME
AI and Education
KEYWORDS
Artificial intelligence, interprofessional education, sepsis care, interprofessional communication, virtual reality simulation
CATEGORY
Poster Presentation
BACKGROUND
A multi-user virtual reality simulation (VRS) has shown to be an effective learning strategy to prepare medical and nursing students for sepsis team training. However, its scalability is limited by human-controlled avatars and unequal cohort sizes between nursing and medical students. Given the unequal medical and nursing cohort sizes (e.g., 300 medical students versus 1500 nursing students), it is unlikely that all nursing students have the opportunity to form interprofessional teams with medical students to engage in doctor-nurse team training. With evolving artificial intelligence (AI), an AI medical team player was developed and replaced the human-controlled avatar as the virtual doctor to enable more nursing students to engage in sepsis team training (Liaw et al., 2023).
AIM
To evaluate the effectiveness of an AI-powered doctor compared to the human-controlled doctor avatar in training nursing students for interprofessional communication and sepsis care.
METHODS
64 nursing students were recruited in the two-arm randomised controlled trial. While the participants in the intervention group went through sepsis team training with an AI-powered doctor, the participants in the control group had their training with human-controlled avatars controlled by medical students in virtual reality simulation. Pre-test and post-test questionnaires were administered to assess their sepsis knowledge and self-efficacy in interprofessional communication. Post-test simulation-based assessments were conducted to assess both groups’ sepsis and communication performance. The study was approved by the National University of Singapore institutional review board (ref no. NUS-IRB-2022-202).
KEY FINDINGS
Compared with the pre-test scores, both the intervention and control groups showed significant improvements in communication knowledge (P = .001) and self-efficacy in interprofessional communication (P < .001) in post-test scores. The intervention group demonstrated a significant improvement in post-test sepsis care knowledge (P <. 001), but not in the control group (P = .16). Although there were no significant differences in sepsis care performance between the groups (P = .39), the intervention group (mean 9.06, SD 1.78) had statistically significantly higher sepsis post-test knowledge scores than the control group (mean 7.75, SD 2.08). Similarly, there were no significant differences in interprofessional communication performance between the two groups (P = .21). However, the control group (mean 69.6, SD 14.4) reported a significantly higher level of self-efficacy in interprofessional communication than the intervention group (mean 60.1, SD 13.3).
LIMITATIONS
Despite evaluating participants’ performance through simulation-based assessment and observation using validated tools, our study did not measure the long-term retention of knowledge and level of self-efficacy in interprofessional communication. Therefore, future studies could evaluate outcomes over a longer period and measure the impact in the clinical setting.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study supported the sustainability of implementing AI-powered doctors in virtual reality simulation to achieve expansibility in sepsis team training. With its practicality, AI-enabled virtual reality simulation is a promising strategy to train large number of nursing students and clinical nurses across educational and healthcare institutions in delivering quality and safe patient care. This learning platform could also extend to international institutions for the opportunity of international collaboration. The findings from our study also suggested future evaluation of various blended learning approaches using AI-powered VRS with human-controlled VRS and face-to-face simulation-based interprofessional learning to optimise clinical performance in sepsis care and interprofessional communication.
REFERENCE
Liaw, S. Y., Tan, J. Z., Bin Rusli, K. D., Ratan, R., Zhou, W., Lim, S., Lau, T. C., Seah, B., & Chua, W. L. (2023). Artificial intelligence versus human-controlled doctor in virtual reality simulation for sepsis team training: Randomized controlled study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e47748. https://doi.org/10.2196/47748
