Last week colleagues from FLIE took part in the #Restart a Heart Day. Which is part of an international campaign to raise awareness of cardiac arrest and teach people how to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).
The event took place last week in the main Talbot campus courtyard. It was open to the whole BU community and aimed at engaging as many staff, students and visitors as possible and teaching them this life-saving skill.
Colleagues from FLIE created YouTube 360/Virtual Reality play lists which demonstrated various aspects of heart health and cardiology professional practice. The videos were fully immersive experiential viewable scenarios using Oculus Quest Virtual Reality headsets.
Image taken from You Tube/Oxford Medical Education – Cardiac Arrest Experience – Patient point of view in advanced life support / code blue 08/03/2017
The most popular one allowed the viewer to experience cardiac arrest from a patient point of view.
Staff and students were presented with various choices of virtual reality experiences, including a virtual tour of the human heart, seeing a heart going into Atrial Fibrillation, and for those participants who really wanted to engage with a fully immersive experience, they could be transported into a patient’s chest cavity during a real-life (recorded) operation.
Image taken from the virtual tour of the human heart. YouTube/Sharecare YOU VR 14/12/2016
Participants gave the team some very positive feedback. A student mentioned how much easier it is to learn where the different parts of the heart are when you can see it up close, Some of the staff from Bournemouth Hospital shared their experience using Google’s AR (Augmented Reality) Glasses, which was useful to make comparisons.
While everyone has a different tolerance for immersive technologies, it was really great to see so many staff and students engaging with virtual reality while simultaneously learning such an important life skill that could ultimately help to start a heart and save a life.
If you would like to find out more about immersive technologies and how they can be applied in teaching practice please contact your Faculty Learning Technologist.
Read more about VR in Higher Education
