Metaverse technologies in acute care medical education: A scoping review

Abstract

Background

The concept of the metaverse is a virtual world that immerses users, allowing them to interact with the digital environment. Due to metaverse's utility in collaborative and immersive simulation, it can be advantageous for medical education in high-stakes care settings such as emergency, critical, and acute care. Consequently, there has been a growth in educational metaverse use, which has yet to be characterized alongside other simulation modalities literature. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of all research describing metaverse use in education for emergency, critical, and acute care.

Methods

We used Arksey and O'Malley's framework with the Levac et al. modifications to conduct a scoping review by searching these five databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIC, Web of Science, and Education Source). The framework comprises six steps: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant literature; (3) study selection; (4) data extraction; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting data; and (6) consultation with key informants. Relevant themes and trends were extracted and mapped for reporting.

Results

The search yielded 8175 citations, which ultimately led to data extraction from 65 articles. Studies evaluated metaverse programs for the learning and assessment of both technical skills (management of code blue, sepsis, stroke, etc.) and nontechnical skills (e.g., interprofessional collaboration, communication, critical decision making). Barriers to metaverse implementation include technical challenges and difficulty evaluating educational effectiveness.

Conclusions

The results of this scoping review highlight the current applications of metaverse as an educational tool, its identified strengths and weaknesses, and further comparison between metaverse and other educational modalities such as high-fidelity simulation. This work provides direction for future primary and secondary research that can aid educational programmers and curriculum planners in maximizing metaverse potential in emergency, critical, and acute medical education.