Bamberg Academies and TriCAT collaborate to Develop Nursing Training in Virtual Reality (VR)
In the future, VR will be used for training at the Skills Lab of the Bamberg Academies for Health and Nursing Professions. After several months of planning and idea collection, TriCAT and the Bamberg Academies started the project work in December 2020. The goal of the collaboration is to create typical and realistic nursing training scenarios in VR based on TriCAT’s multi-user VR learning environment i:medtasim. In this way, the area of rescue service operational scenes that has been depicted so far will be supplemented by content from the area of nursing over the next 24 months. These will not only be planned and developed in close coordination with the instructors from Bamberg, but will also be subsequently integrated and evaluated in the training courses in the Skills Lab as part of the training.
Both partners will not only integrate the knowledge gained into their own workflows, but will also make it available to other training institutions and training areas via publications and lectures. “What is now used at medical simulation centers and vocational schools of emergency medical services, not only in Germany, will now be made available to the field of nursing,” notes Markus Neuberger, Business Unit Manager Medicine / Healthcare at TriCAT GmbH. On 10.12.2020, the software was officially handed over to the Bamberg academies and set up. Now the nursing scenes are gradually being developed and integrated. “We are not only looking forward to the joint project, but also to the reactions of our nursing trainees, who will soon be able to immerse themselves in the virtual world alone or in pairs and gain their first experience,” emphasizes Florian Strehl, the employee responsible for the VR project on the part of the Bamberg Academies.
The Bamberg Academies for Health Professions gGmbH is a joint venture of the shareholders Sozialstiftung Bamberg, Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft für soziale Dienste and Arbeiterwohlfahrt Stadt und Landkreis Bamberg. More than 400 students in vocational training and about 1,700 participants in special advanced and further training courses are accompanied in the 6 specialized schools for health care professions. The Bamberg Academies for Health Professions gGmbH is a cooperation partner of more than 90 hospitals, inpatient as well as outpatient care facilities from the region of Upper, Lower and Middle Franconia and offers a wide range of educational programs for members of health and social professions.
The new innovative learning location Skills Lab Bamberg is a company project of the Bamberg Academies for Health Professions gGmbH. There, learners from various areas of the healthcare professions have the opportunity to experience and train action sequences from their respective everyday working lives in a realistic manner. New technologies, such as high fidelity simulators, voice-controlled tools and VR, create new opportunities to support learning. In addition, there is an opportunity to recreate the daily lives of patients and colleagues in other professions. In this way, not only technical and methodological skills are promoted and developed, but also social and personal skills. In the Skills Lab Bamberg, patients, industry, healthcare companies and professionals from a wide range of professions have the opportunity to apply new technologies, products and processes and thus raise healthcare to a new level. The Skills Lab Nursing and Patient Care is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy and is one of four projects of the Medical Valley Center Bamberg.
