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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

Doing what must be done – Fourth Reconciliation Lecture by Colm McGivern

2015-03-17

Colm McGivern
Photo: Johan Roux

Fourth Reconciliation Lecture: Audio

McGivern: speech (pdf)

The UFS Annual Reconciliation Lecture brings leaders, scholars, and the broader community together in a shared vision for social change and conflict transformation. This event is organised by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor in Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies. In 2012, Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, was the first speaker to deliver the lecture. This year, at the Fourth Annual Reconciliation Lecture held on the Bloemfontein Campus, Colm McGivern, Director of the British Council in South Africa, continued the legacy.

Doing what must be done
'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.' (Ceasefire by Michael Longley)

Using this poem to powerful effect, McGivern showed what reconciliation asks of each and every citizen: to do what must be done. “I think that peace and reconciliation are mutually dependent,” he said. “You can’t maintain one over the long run without attending to the other.”

South Africa’s history has tracked along a similar path to that of Northern Ireland. “And lessons from other places can be powerful and instructive,” McGivern said. Sometimes reconciliation needs a focal point for people to clearly see its power, as Madiba has for South Africa. But at other times, reconciliation needs everyday citizens to “kiss Achilles’ hand’”.

McGivern mentioned Candice Mama and her family, who have recently forgiven Eugene de Kock,. Or as Gordon Wilson did after his daughter, Mary, died holding his hand in the 1987 Enniskillen bombing in Ireland. In a TV interview mere hours later, Wilson forgave the killers of his daughter, and hope rippled across Ireland.

Learning from others
“People’s capability,” McGivern said, “to reconcile their own differences, however stark, can be boosted by learning from others in other places, internationally or perhaps just beyond their own identity group.” A powerful truth now being pursued in a joined initiative between the British Council and Teaching Divided Histories.

As an example, McGivern referred to the short film, ‘In Peace Apart’ where one Catholic and one Protestant girl decide to swop school uniforms. Harnessing the potential of moving images and digital media, the initiative enables teachers to explore contentious issues of history and identity in the classroom. This international field of conflict education draws lessons “from activities in Sierra Leone, India, Lebanon, and, of course, South Africa.”

Resuscitation of the national spirit of magnanimity
Here in South Africa, Archbishop Desmund Tutu has “called for a resuscitation of the national spirit of magnanimity and common purpose”, McGivern quoted. In the book, 80 Moments that Shaped the World, South Africa appears four times, McGivern pointed out. And as Archbishop Tutu wrote in the foreword of the book, “no act is unforgivable; no person or country is beyond redemption and the world needs more people to reach out to one another.”

For more information or enquiries contact news@ufs.ac.za.

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