Designing and Evaluating a Virtual Reality Training for Paramedics to Practice Triage in Complex Situations

Paul Vogt*, Rik Boer, Marieke de Boer, Hilco Prins, Joya Smit, Daan Tuinstra, Nick Degens, Marike Hettinga, Wolter Paans

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Paramedics are often the first to provide medical aid at mass-casualty incidents. These are complex stressful situations where the first paramedics’ role is to provide rapid response and perform a triage to classify the urgency of victims needing to go to hospital. As these situations do not occur frequently, Virtual Reality provides a cost-effective manner to frequently train for these incidents. We present a user-centered design approach to design the training, which we evaluated with 32 paramedics and trainers. We integrated the design with developing a business model that we evaluated with ten training coordinators of ambulance services. The evaluation revealed that paramedics were highly motivated during the training and that they rated the training high on user-experience. Trainers indicated that the resulting training can be used in practice; not as a replacement but as an addition to current practices. To conclude, the study reveals that co-developing a VR training with paramedics and their trainers, can yield an effective platform to practice triage in complex situations. While further improvements are necessary, our study not only provides a set training, but also a roadmap for how to design VR training environments for paramedics and possibly other (medical) services.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationVirtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality - 15th International Conference, VAMR 2023, Held as Part of the 25th HCI International Conference, HCII 2023, Proceedings
EditorsJessie Y. C. Chen, Gino Fragomeni
PublisherSpringer
Pages503-522
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-35634-6
ISBN (Print)978-3-031-35633-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9-Jul-2023
Event15th International Conference on Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, VAMR 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 23-Jul-202328-Jul-2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14027 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, VAMR 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period23/07/202328/07/2023

Keywords

  • Mass-casualty incident training
  • Paramedic training
  • User-centered design

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