The Future of Training: How Virtual Reality Can Protect Clinicians from Healthcare-associated Infections

Every day in the U.S., 1 in 31 hospital patients contracts at least one healthcare-associated infection (HAI). In addition to these patient infections, healthcare workers themselves are extremely vulnerable to work-acquired infectious diseases. 

The Covid-19 pandemic further emphasized the dangers that frontline workers face as healthcare staff contracted the virus at about five times the rate of all other workers in 2020. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), between 80,000-180,000 health and care workers died from Covid-19 during the height of the pandemic, underscoring the need for improved infection prevention and control (IPC).  

Improved training measures are needed to decrease the risk of HAIs and ensure the safety of patients and healthcare workers alike. Across industries like the military, aviation, and emergency services, virtual reality (VR) — including augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR) — has proven to be a popular and engaging learning tool. 

The adoption of healthcare VR training has experienced a significant increase in the last decade and is now recognized as a viable instructional medium. Fortune Business Insight projects the healthcare VR market to grow from $4.18 billion in 2024 to $46.37 billion by 2032, and this expansion is already being implemented industrywide. 

While adoption in other healthcare sectors have proven successful, VR’s safety and efficiency are needed in IPC. Here are the top reasons health systems should adopt VR training to prevent HAIs:

An easy way of visualizing germs

VR allows learners to actually ‘see’ the virtual germs responsible for causing infections and spreading disease, which could otherwise only be seen under a microscope. The technology also heightens users’ senses, drawing their attention to things they would be unable to see in traditional learning environments. 

The unique experience VR provides in IPC allows for easier detection, creating a mental image that healthcare workers can take back to the real world to help them visualize germs and how they spread. A study on hand hygiene, an essential yet often-neglected component in preventing HAIs, found VR training enhances hand hygiene practices of healthcare workers, significantly improving adherence behaviors by 68%. This illustrates how making these invisible hazards visible allows learners to fully account for their presence, improving behavior and safety in the real world.

Immersive experiences that lead to learned behaviors

VR training is extremely immersive, allowing learners to acquire skills by completing the same tasks needed in real-life scenarios. When learners are training in an environment close to a realistic scenario, they are much more likely to be able to follow actual behavioral procedures. 

In IPC, maintaining hand hygiene, injection safety, environmental cleaning, and personal protective equipment usage are critical skills. VR provides a controlled, immersive environment where learners can practice these skills, building muscle memory to increase the likelihood of repeating these behaviors in real life.

Minimizes risk and cost to keep healthcare professionals safe

VR technology allows multiple learners to undergo a training scenario simultaneously, eliminating the need for labor-intensive sterilization protocols between sessions or eliminating the need of creating simulated germs, both of which can be costly. While infection can be spread if procedures are not followed properly when interacting with real patients, in VR, learners aren’t exposed to a contagious patient and are not in any real risk or danger. With the risk eliminated, this allows learners to address the critical need for workforce preparedness in infection prevention, providing a safe and realistic environment to learn from mistakes without fear of repercussions.  

Provides real-time feedback to better understand procedures

VR increases cognition while fostering critical thinking, situational awareness, and problem-solving skills. Unlike traditional in-person training, VR technology can easily track learner progress, providing them with real-time feedback on skill application. Skills take time and practice to master. For this reason, gamification helps better develop these skills more than in passive exposure, like reading procedural information in print format. The gamification elements of VR training such as introducing challenges and rewards enhance engagement and learning retention among users by encouraging them to repeatedly practice skills in pursuit of a set goal. 

It is both dangerous and expensive for healthcare workers to undergo IPC training in real-world scenarios. VR training provides all the benefits of on-the-job training while eliminating risk, increasing engagement, and being more cost-effective. Due to its flexibility, VR can be used anywhere, personalized to different learners’ needs, and is scalable, so organizations can safely train staff for any emerging infectious threat.

Photo: Moyo Studio, Getty Images

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