Relias, a leading provider of workforce enablement solutions dedicated to empowering healthcare organizations and caregivers, continues to consolidate its position as an integral enabler in healthcare training. By enlarging its suite of learning tools with assessment-based virtual reality (VR) technology, courtesy of its recent absorption of the innovative virtual reality training firm, InceptionXR, Relias is revolutionizing training for healthcare professionals. Virtual reality provides a compelling and immersive training experience, backed by research, that brings quantifiable improvements to care outcomes.
Uniquely, VR empowers healthcare workers to hone their skills in authentic clinical scenarios, yielding enhanced retention of essential knowledge, superior decision-making abilities, and steadfast adherence to recognized best practice standards. And more importantly, all these improvements are achieved totally risk-free for both the practitioner and the patient. With an alarming statistic indicating that every day one in 31 hospital patients is affected by healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), the advent of VR provides a novel way to visually demonstrate the spread of germs in real time — a truly breakthrough solution in the ever-escalating war against infections.
A landmark study published recently in the American Journal of Infection Control lends weight to the effectiveness of VR training, demonstrating that it could increase competency in hand hygiene by a staggering 68%, while simultaneously bolstering nurses’ confidence in infection prevention. By enabling participants to visualize how germs spread, VR training fosters profound behavioral shifts that reduce the risk of infection during patient care.
The union of Relias’ established platform with InceptionXR’s expertise in the extended reality environment makes VR training scalable and user-friendly while providing robust, consistent data that enables healthcare organizations to reap strategic insights. Equipped with a VR headset and minimal space, users can undertake training at their convenience, reducing training time by 75% compared to live simulations, minimizing disruptions to patient care and reducing operational burden and training costs.
Highlighting the potential of the innovation, Shawn Barber, Chief Product Officer at Relias, stated, ‘Preventable healthcare-associated infections remain a critical concern, posing serious risks to both patients and healthcare workers. Addressing this challenge demands innovative solutions that move beyond traditional modalities of training… VR allows learners to actually see germ transmission, reinforcing behaviors in an engaging and active way.’