The future: Can virtual reality bridge the medical education gap?

Luna Williams, a commentator for Arora Medical Education, examines ways that medtech can be used to help engage younger generations in medical and clinical education. 

Earlier this month, the NHS lost its position as the best health service in the developed world. 

Having held its place at the top of the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking report -- which it has held for the last releases-- the NHS dropped to fourth position, and was overtaken by Norway, the Netherlands and Australia. 

According to the US-based ThinkTank responsible for conducting the report, this slip was “largely due to growing delays across the system in people’s ability to access care quickly.”

These have been no secret to the British public over the last few months, with the COVID-19 pandemic commonly cited as the key cause of these delays. With routine and non-urgent treatments pushed back as NHS staff  were poised to tackle the immediate threat the virus presented to patients during its multiple waves, the patient backlog has been given almost 18 months to grow. This has led to longer waiting times, appointment push backs and, in several cases, a lack of contact or information for those waiting for GP and specialist appointments.

However, as Siva Anandaciva (the chief analyst at corresponding UK ThinkTank, the Kings Fund) points out, the pandemic cannot be held solely accountable for this backlog. 

“We can’t brush this under the carpet as being solely a consequence of the impact of the pandemic on patients, staff and services” he says. “Even before COVID, waiting lists for treatment were already sizeable after a decade of stalling funding and a growing workforce crisis.”

The medical education gap 

The workforce crisis cited by Anandaciva has been a growing problem in the NHS, and was massively exacerbated by the pandemic.

According to the Government’s UK Shortage Occupation List, General Practitioners, Nurses and Paramedics -- as well as several other specialised medical roles -- are all experiencing a ‘skills shortage’. This problem is commonly referred to as the ‘medical education gap’: quite simply, not enough people are gaining the proper qualifications to take on medical roles and meet growing population demands.

What this means in practice is the patient to GP ratio is the worst it has been in more than 50 years, with 60 GP’s to every 100,000 patients according to data from the Nuffield Trust and the number of nationwide GP shortages facing a shortfall of 11,500 by the end of the decade.

This gap also affects other healthcare roles, such as nurses; the Health Foundation found that 1 in 10 nurse positions were still vacant this December. 

With this in mind, narrowing the medical education gap has become more critical than ever; predictions estimate that, if it is not drastically tackled and population growth continues at the same rate, the total healthcare worker shortage will reach 350,000 by 2030. 

Having seen the pressure an unprecedented global health crisis can place on our NHS, and those that work in it, there has never been a stronger imperative to find ways to support, motivate and encourage medical students and employees.

The power of medtech

While medical technology solutions are frequently patient-oriented, there are many ways in which developers and those working within the Medtech industry can shift their focus to help with the education, recruitment and retention of clinical professionals.

Some Trusts are already trialling the use of such technologies -- made more essential during social distancing restrictions. For instance, the Kent Community Foundation reported several ways they were able to employ MedTech solutions to help with the recruitment and management of staff during Stay at Home orders in the pandemic’s second wave.

The Trust reported major improvements in recruitment processes through the use of remote interview rooms, virtual recruitment fairs, online assessments, and online administrative solutions for those offered new roles.  

In management, data also showed that technologies had helped show a better, more consistent approach to managing employees. One instance saw virtual ‘wobble rooms’ (inspired by physical wobble rooms in many Kent hospitals) designed, where staff could go for a time-out. Virtual coffee mornings and quizzes were also used by the Trust to help provide relief and connect staff members who were forced to do their jobs in isolation during the same period. 

In this instance, technologies helped to bring more skilled staff through the doors, whilst also motivating (and retaining) current employees who had been placed under additional pressure because of the pandemic. 

But how can these trials be used to inspire and implement bigger changes? And, more crucially, how they can be used to help bridge the education gap and encourage younger generations especially to undertake clinical training?

Virtual reality and simulation 

Virtual Reality, or VR, has been taking many industries by storm for several years, with everything from gaming to retail experimenting with the use of VR interactive simulators. 

Healthcare is no exception to this, and medtech developers have been working on clinical-based simulation technologies to help with the training of medical students and professionals for some time.

One 2018 study found that 48% of 2016 medical examinees used virtual education technology for laparoscopic surgery training. During the same period, the report also indicated that VR improved the final grades of 74% of students and that a higher accuracy in medical practice by people trained through VR simulations was reported in 87% of student cases. .

The effectiveness of VR in medicine has been trialled in small batches over the past five years, including in relation to interventional radiology education, surgery simulation and in lecture delivery -- all with success. 

Going forward 

As we move further into a post-pandemic society, developers in medical technologies and NHS employers must work together to develop, trial and implement VR.

‘Generation Z’ is known for being especially responsive to technology-based learning, and this is the talent pool which policymakers, educators and recruiters must look to for the next generation of GPs, specialist doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals.