Augmented reality has been praised for assisting nursing students at the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) prepare for possibly caring for COVID-19 patients.
The technology provides a scenario where a patient has the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its various symptoms. Using a headset, a student can see a hologram of a patient, their personal information, and vital signs within the real-world room.
As the virus progresses, users can see how the patient deteriorates from being pre-symptomatic to the point of nearly being on a ventilator.
This allows students to develop their skills in assessing and diagnosing such a patient in a safe, controlled learning environment.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is a fast-moving situation, and while New Zealand is in the enviable position of not having this disease in the community any more, we need our healthcare workers to be fully ready to identify and manage any cases, as well as keeping up with the latest learnings about the disease from around the globe," said SIT's Year 2 Bachelor of Nursing programme manager Karyn Madden.
"Being able to work with holographic patients is actually even better than real life, as it's safer and provides a much wider range of clinical situations than would otherwise be possible."
Madden said theory students have learnt during the COVID-19 lockdown is now being applied practically with the technology.
Nursing student Taris Gilder says it has been helpful.
"The new COVID version is really good cause we can see what it would be like for a patient to have COVID so we are not thrown in the deep end," she said.
"We get to link what we have been learning while we were in lockdown with what we could potentially see while we go out on placement."
SIT was among the first in New Zealand to use augmented reality technology to help train students, first acquiring Hololens headsets in 2018.
