Building a Handoff Communication Virtual Experience for Nursing Students Using Virtual Humans

Effective communication among healthcare professionals is critical to delivering safe, high-quality patient care. One important real-world skill that nursing students must acquire is generating accurate handoff communication reports. The central aim of this study was to build, assess, and revise a virtual experience simulation that allows nursing students to observe a standardized clinical situation in an immersive environment and then practice the situation-background-assessment-recommendation communication method. This between-groups experimental study, which was modified in light of COVID-19 concerns, evaluated how well 69 prelicensure nursing students understood a handoff communication report after viewing a virtual human patient and nurse interact during a triage assessment scenario. Results indicate student comprehension levels did not differ based on which of two metacognitive learning strategies was used. Participants in both study groups were able to accurately complete a situation-background-assessment-recommendation instrument based on the virtual experience. Further, they believed that watching a virtual nurse perform a triage assessment would help them perform one themselves in a similar virtual environment. There was also an unexpected study finding related to patient safety within the context of the simulation. This finding warrants further research that will lead to revision of the virtual experience used to train future nurses.