Last week, ORI was delighted to welcome third year BSc (Hons) Operating Department Practice (ODP) students to ORI’s Virtual Reality Training Lab for a series of workshops. The workshops were a follow-up from last year’s highly successful collaboration between ORI, Debora Almeida and her colleagues from the ODP team.

Over a period of 3 days, Professor Tom Wainwright introduced the students to ORI and some key concepts in orthopaedic surgery, before Shay Bahadori delivered six repeated workshops to students. In the workshops Shay taught and demonstrated key aspects of hip and knee arthroscopy, knee arthroplasty, and robotic surgery by using ORI’s virtual reality simulators. The students then got hands on experience of trying surgery for themselves, with the aim of increasing their surgical skills and clinical knowledge of orthopaedic procedures. The student feedback for the workshops was excellent with all students reporting that they had both enjoyed and learned from the experience.

Debora Almeida, Senior Lecturer in ODP, commented:  “This is such a great partnership between the ODP programme and ORI. We are giving the ODP students an opportunity to further develop their skills and knowledge related to arthroscopic and robotic procedures. They finish the session with a clearer understanding of the possible difficulties of these types of procedures and will be better prepared to support the surgeons’ needs.”

Professor Tom Wainwright, Deputy Head of ORI, added: “It was great to host the students at ORI again, and well done to Debora and Shay for organising the workshops. It was clear that everyone really enjoyed the sessions, and it was a great way for us to integrate the results of our research and clinical work at ORI into teaching sessions for the students”.

Shay demonstrating the virtual reality technology