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The (virtual) reality of healthcare education

25 November 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

Bennie Botha brings another element of teaching to the classroom for future healthcare professionals. Here, he facilitates a session with students from the School of Nursing.

These days we are surrounded by technology. Interactive whiteboards, 3-D printers, smartphones, laptops, e-books, and virtual reality (VR).

VR was previously associated with the gaming industry, but today it has many uses, including the healthcare industry and more specifically, the field of nursing.

A staff member in the School of Nursing at the University of the Free State (UFS), Bennie Botha, explains that he always had a fascination with VR. With VR being more affordable to the general user and with him working in the School of Nursing, he wanted to make a difference by providing a more financially sustainable way for students to integrate theory and practical work.

It was then that Botha, in collaboration with staff from the Department of Computer Science and Informatics and the School of Nursing, developed a virtual environment to train Nursing students as part of his master’s thesis. The title of his dissertation is: Measuring the usability and user experience of virtual reality as a teaching and learning method for nursing students. His supervisor, Dr Lizette de Wet of the Department of Computer Science and Informatics, said the cooperation between two disciplines is important. “This research can make a big contribution towards teaching and learning,” she said.

Adding to existing technology-rich environment

This simulation in a computer-generated environment adds another element to teaching. Instead of only listening to a lecturer, students are immersed in a relevant teaching scenario and are able to interact within a 3D medical institution, treating and taking care of 3D patients.

The UFS School of Nursing has implemented this first for South Africa, using VR as an instrument to train nursing students. Currently, third-year students and postgraduate Paediatrics students are exposed to this way of training.

This new invention for the School of Nursing adds to the already existing technology-rich environment of the Clinical Simulation Unit within the school; a facility where healthcare students are exposed to training in a safe environment without harming the patient, using high-fidelity patient manikins.

Cost-effective simulation platform

According to Botha, VR provides a cost-effective simulation platform that can be used to augment high-fidelity simulations. “It is also a low-cost alternative for institutions that do not have the capital to implement high-fidelity simulations. By implementing new innovative teaching methods, we aim to provide quality healthcare professionals who can showcase the educational excellence of the School of Nursing at the UFS,” says Botha.

Rector content

Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, visited the School of Nursing and engaged in the simulator-based game.
(Photo: Supplied)

He explains the process: “Virtual reality provides students with an opportunity to learn by engaging in a simulator-based game. The virtual environment requires the students to perform a respiratory foreign-body object simulation scenario. Before each virtual simulation session, students are briefed and given the relevant outcomes of the scenario. Students also receive a quick tutorial on the use of the controllers and the head-mounted display.”

“Once a session is complete, a debriefing session is held where students can reflect on the outcome of the simulation. They can view a recording of their own actions for self-reflection afterwards.”

Botha believes the VR environment he created for Nursing students contributes to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, giving the UFS a competitive edge in new developments and the use of innovative teaching and learning technology.

News Archive

Is milk really so well-known, asks UFS’s Prof. Osthoff

2011-03-17

Prof. Garry Osthoff
Photo: Stephen Collett

Prof. Garry Osthoff opened a whole new world of milk to the audience in his inaugural lecture, Milk: the well-known (?) food, in our Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Prof. Osthoff has done his research in protein chemistry, immuno-chemistry and enzymology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria and post-doctoral research at the Bowman-Grey School of Medicine, North Carolina, USA. That was instrumental in establishing food chemistry at the university.

He is involved in chemical aspects of food, with a focus on dairy science and technology. He is also involved in the research of cheese processing as well as milk evolution and concentrated on milk evolution in his lecture. Knowledge of milk from dairy animals alone does not provide all the explanations of milk as food.

Some aspects he highlighted in his lecture were that milk is the first food to be utilised by young mammals and that it is custom-designed for each species. “However, mankind is an opportunist and has found ways of easy access to food by the practice of agriculture, where plants as well as animals were employed or rather exploited,” he said.

The cow is the best-known milk producer, but environmental conditions forced man to select other animals. In spite of breeding selection, cattle seem not to have adapted to the most extreme conditions such as high altitudes with sub-freezing temperatures, deserts and marshes.

Prof. Osthoff said the consumption of the milk as an adult is not natural; neither is the consumption of milk across species. This practice of mankind may often have consequences, when signs of malnutrition or diseases are noticed. Two common problems are an allergy to milk and lactose intolerance.

Allergies are normally the result of an immune response of the consumer to the foreign proteins found in the milk. In some cases it might help to switch from one milk source to another, such as switching from cow’s milk to goat’s milk.

Prof. Osthoff said lactose intolerance – the inability of adult humans to digest lactose, the milk sugar – is natural, as adults lose that ability to digest lactose. The symptoms of the condition are stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This problem is mainly found in the warmer climates of the world. This could be an indication of early passive development of dairy technology. In these regions milk could not be stored in its fresh form, but in a fermented form, in which case the lactose was pre-digested by micro-organisms, and the human population never adapted to digesting lactose in adulthood.

According to Prof. Osthoff, it is basically the lactose in milk that has spurred dairy technology. Its fermentation has resulted in the development of yoghurts and all the cheeses that we know. In turn, the intolerance to lactose has spurred a further technological solution: lactose-free milk is currently produced by pre-digestion of lactose with enzymes.

It was realised that the milks and products from different species differed in quality aspects such as keeping properties and taste. It was also realised that the nutritional properties differed as well as their effects on health. One example is the mentioned allergy against cow’s milk proteins, which may be solved by the consumption of goat’s milk. The nutritional benefits and technological processing of milk aroused an interest in more information, and it was realised that the information gained from human milk and that of the few domesticated species do not provide a complete explanation of the properties of milk as food. Of the 250 species of milk which have been studied, only the milk of humans and a few domesticated dairy animals has been studied in detail.

Media Release
15 March 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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