Investigating the Impact of Using Virtual Reality on Improving the Quality of Nursing Education: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Rapid advances in information technology help educational centers to teach with new methods. On the other hand, new educational tools such as virtual reality have faced a considerable change in education. This study aimed to investigate the impact of using virtual reality on improving the quality of nursing education. Keywords searched methods: Related English language articles in the title and abstract using the PubMed database (from 2009 to November 2020). Keywords included Nursing education, Nursing care, Nursing process, Nursing activities, VR, and Virtual reality. Inclusion criteria included all studies published in English that examined the effect of using virtual reality on improving nursing education quality. Review articles were excluded from the study. Results: From a total of 10,716 studies, 32 articles were selected by title. After reviewing the abstract, 14 articles remained to be reviewed. After evaluating the full text of these articles, eight qualified articles were selected for final review. In line with the primary purpose, in 6 articles (75%), virtual reality has a significant positive effect on improving nursing education quality. It has increased the performance of nurses in the clinical environment. In one article (12.5%), this effect was negative and reduced the performance of nurses. No effect was observed in one article (12.5%).Conclusion: According to the present study results, it seems that the use of virtual reality in most cases has been effective in improving the quality of nursing education. However, due to the increasing technology and increasing useful educational tools in health, especially nursing, more studies in this field are felt.

Keywords:

Nursing education , Nursing care , Nursing process , Nursing activities , Virtual reality