Virtual Environments for Medical Skills Training

📄 Project Abstract

In today's world, doctors have to be highly competent at performing assorted medical procedures. The highly specialised nature of the work involved means extensive training is needed; and as a result of doctors working a lot less hours, it is much harder for them to find time to practice on patients, resulting in a need for other training methods which are highly realistic and readily available. Virtual environments have become a fundamental part of training in other professions, such as pilots; therefore it would be expected that if levels of realism are suitable, and the training is proven to work, virtual reality will also become a fundamental part of training for doctors. The use of virtual environments for medical skills training is already becoming an increasingly popular alternative to traditional methods, with many commercial products being developed. This project presents a procedure that is performed on newborn infants, and has not been simulated previously. The procedure inv...