Effectiveness of a low-cost VR simulator for emergency management training in dental surgery

Abstract

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a low-cost, portable VR system for training of emergency management decision making in dental surgery. We designed and developed a smart phone based virtual reality system with simulated dental surgery related emergencies during a virtual root canal treatment that records user actions and response time.The evaluation was conducted with 20 dentistry students of the 4th year and 5th year of Thammasat University. Each group went through three sessions of an interactive VR root canal treatment in which the students were tasked with completing the procedure and managing various emergency situations. We measured skin conductance to determine the stress response and during each session. The response time to emergency between two groups from all sessions was analyzed to determine knowledge gain and retention using the system.