Virtual Reality in Medical Training

One of the other research assistants on my team is applying to be a medical illustrator. A medical illustrator is essentially the person who creates the figures and images in textbooks and such. She recently interviewed for the medical illustration program at Johns Hopkins and was talking to a current student in the program who told her about their project on virtual reality. If you don’t know, virtual reality is the latest advancement in technology that from what I have heard at least is most used in games to give the player a feeling as if they were actually in the world of the game. With virtual reality, it allows you to see the world of your game as your actual field of vision through the big goggles that you wear. The student was researching the possibility of using virtual reality to create a new system of teaching for medical students. I was completely surprised by the idea because I had only ever associated virtual reality with gaming before and had never thought that it could have an academic purpose. Though the idea is far from becoming a reality I think that it could be a great development especially for those pursuing surgery as their specialty. This could create very realistic and also very safe environments for medical students and residents to practice their skills. If this actually became a reality, I am curious as to how/if this might change the overall feel of medical training. While I think it is definitely a bonus that it would take a little bit of pressure off by providing a safe place to practice where mistakes would not kill patients, could virtual reality also turn training into a game almost and result in doctors not realizing the gravity of mistakes when they finally move onto real patients? It will be interesting to see if virtual reality training develops into a real possibility in the coming years.