Students at the National University of Singapore will be learning how to care for patients by using virtual reality (VR).

Indeed, medical and nursing students at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine will be trained using a virtual simulation program from next month. The program – the Virtual Reality in Agitation Management (VRAM) program – will allow them to be in charge of a ward and attend to patients, in an almost real environment with distractions such as requests from nurses and family members to follow up on certain tasks, noise from a television in the background, and people who gather around the scene.

With virtual reality, students will learn to de-escalate the situation and make decisions such as giving medication to assist the patient in the best way possible. They are able to learn from real-case scenarios and know what to say and do to keep everyone safe.

The program has been created in March 2022 and has been through tests since August 2021. It was reported that around 90% of students are feeling more confident in managing and communicating with agitated patients. The University will then provide 13 sets of VR gear that students can borrow to practice at home. 300 medical students and 300 nursing students are set to benefit from the program each year.