HCI meets Nursing Care : The application of Mixed Reality in basic Nursing Care Education

Abstract

The traditional education of basic activities in nursing care (e.g. patient mobilization or hygiene) poses different limitations like, e.g. restricted options for self-education or limited realism in the learning context. By blending the real-world with virtual content, Mixed Reality (MR) technology holds great potential to address given shortcomings in interactive learning scenarios. In this work we explore how Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can inform the development of MR systems for basic nursing care education. We conducted a review of the current employment of MR and Virtual Reality (VR) displays (including desktop-based ones) in basic nursing care education and discuss our results in respect to the conceptual HCI framework Blended Interaction. In contrast to existing reviews, our work differs by placing a clear focus on activities of basic nursing care education and the question how HCI can inspire the design of MR applications which support such activities. We first conducted a search of the Web of Science Core Collection based on predefined search terms. 139 publications were found. We filtered them by inclusion criteria to ensure that only papers which use MR or VR displays to support basic nursing care education remained. The remaining publications were viewed with respect to the four domains of design provided by the Blended Interaction framework, namely (1) individual interaction, (2) social interaction and communication, (3) workflow and (4) physical environment. Our results indicate that MR in basic nursing care education just barely scratches the surface. The majority of systems employs desktop-based VR. Most systems facilitate individual interactions by mouse, keyboard or specific haptic devices, support limited or no social interactions, provide structured workflows or free interactions, and employ 2-dimensional VR displays to simulate work environments. Future MR systems could allow for more realistic interactions, stimulate collaboration through 3-dimensional real-world overlays, enhance learning workflows by rendering or deliberately hiding information within real-world scenarios, and facilitate immersive environments with physically enabled virtual objects. In conclusion, we show that the present use of MR in basic nursing care education is limited and introduce directions for design which can help leveraging the technologies’ full potential in the future.