Why Immersive Virtual Reality?
The University of Minnesota School of Nursing is advancing immersive virtual reality as part of a broader strategy to reimagine clinical education. Through carefully designed IVR simulations, students practice clinical judgment, prioritization, communication, delegation, and patient safety in standardized, realistic environments. These experiences complement traditional clinical and simulation learning while generating objective performance data that can help educators better understand how students think, act, and respond in complex care situations.
What Students Practice
IVR gives students opportunities to practice situations that may be difficult to guarantee in traditional clinical settings, including rapid changes in patient status, multiple competing priorities, and complex communication moments.
Students enter realistic patient care environments where they can:
- Recognize changes in patient condition
- Prioritize competing patient needs
- Make decisions in real time
- Communicate with patients and team members
- Delegate appropriately
- Practice safety behaviors
- Reflect on their performance during debriefing
Designed for Learning, Not Just Technology
At the School of Nursing, immersive virtual reality begins with learning outcomes. Scenarios are selected and designed to support clinical judgment, situated attention, embodied decision-making, and reflective learning. Faculty use simulation best practices, structured pre-briefing, and debriefing to ensure that IVR is integrated intentionally into the curriculum.
- Standardized learning experiences: Every student can encounter the same scenario, patient cues, and decision points.
- Safe practice environment: Students can make decisions, see consequences, and learn without risk to patients.
- Scalable clinical learning: IVR can extend access to meaningful practice experiences across programs and locations.
- Performance analytics: Time-stamped data can show what students noticed, what actions they took, and how they responded.
- Debriefing and reflection: Faculty help students connect the immersive experience to clinical reasoning and future practice.
Immersive VR comes to the nursing classroom
Research
The School of Nursing is also studying how IVR can support practice readiness and competency-based education. Our work focuses not only on whether students complete scenarios, but on how they recognize cues, prioritize hypotheses, take action, communicate, and evaluate outcomes.
The University of Minnesota School of Nursing has led multi-site work with Big Ten nursing programs to explore the use of immersive VR in nursing education. This collaborative effort reflects our commitment to building evidence, sharing best practices, and advancing scalable models of clinical learning.
Curriculum Integration
How IVR is used across courses and programs.
IVR is being integrated across prelicensure nursing courses to support progressive development of clinical judgment and practice readiness. Students engage in immersive scenarios that increase in complexity over time, including single-patient and multi-patient care situations.
- Prelicensure nursing education
- Multi-patient scenarios
- Clinical judgment development
- Simulation curriculum mapping
- Future expansion into additional programs or interprofessional learning
Leadership and Collaboration
Big Ten work, partnerships, national/regulatory relevance.
Preparing Faculty to Teach in Immersive Environments
Successful IVR integration depends on faculty preparation. Faculty and teaching specialists are supported in prebriefing, facilitation, observation, debriefing, and use of IVR-generated performance data. This ensures that immersive experiences are pedagogically meaningful and aligned with simulation standards of best practice.
Future Vision
Scaling, statewide impact, workforce readiness.
Building the Future of Clinical Education
Looking ahead, the School of Nursing is expanding IVR as part of a broader vision for simulation, immersive learning, and competency-based education. Future priorities include strengthening clinical judgment assessment, supporting rural and resource-limited nursing programs, advancing faculty development, and using performance analytics to better prepare graduates for complex practice environments.
- Health system partnerships
- Industry partnerships
- Regulatory conversations
- Statewide VR hub concept
- Workforce readiness
- Rural and underserved program access
- Donor opportunities