Dr. Tobias Mühling from the University Hospital of Würzburg is responsible for the medical side of the STEP.VR project. The technical aspects such as usability, degree of immersion and simulation sickness were investigated by the Chair of Human-Computer Interaction (Prof. Dr. Marc Latoschik) at the University of Würzburg from September 2020 to July 2021.
Together with the evaluation data from the seminar, the survey was included in the publication "Virtual Reality in Medical Emergencies Training: benefits, perceived stress, and learning success". It was published in the renowned journal “Multimedia Systems”.
Meanwhile, a randomized-controlled trial showed that learning gains from using STEP.VR are more sustained than those from conventional teaching methods. The results were presented at the 2023 GMA Annual Meeting (Abstract #213).
The first VR-based practical examination in medical studies in Germany took place at the University of Würzburg in July 2023. Here, feasibility, acceptance and item characteristics were evaluated when using STEP.VR as an examination station in the context of an OSCE examination (Objective Structured Clinical Examination).
Other partners who use and evaluate STEP.VR in different modes in student teaching are the University Hospital Marburg, the Westphalian Wilhelms University Münster, the University of Oldenburg, the University of Saarland (Homburg) and the Charité in Berlin.
STEP.VR has been part of the Autumn School of the German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) since 2021. Young physicians in internal medicine training have the opportunity to improve their emergency medicine skills in hands-on courses.
