Visual Feedback Using VR Patient Avatar in Care and Nursing Training Environments

Care and Nursing Training (CNT) refers to developing the ability to respond effectively to patient needs by examining patients’ needs and improving trainees’ nursing skills in a nursing environment. Existing methods have been performed based on videos and books, but the best way is to experiment with actual humans. However, patients must be continuously recruited for training, and inexperienced trainees may make mistakes when practicing at medical institutions or public health centers for CNT training. Thus, in this paper, we propose a VR-based virtual patient avatar to perform a CNT program and to implement an effective feedback system; visual feedback is provided to trainees using VR to express the patient’s pain state in real-time. This study is anticipated to provide a new pathway for developing advanced care training methods by being the most effective method for caregivers who must check whether the patient feels pain periodically.