Cardiopulmonary resuscitation training for high school students using an immersive 360-degree virtual reality environment

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a lifesaving emergency procedure. To increase survival rates, it is recommended to increase the number of high school students who know how to perform CPR. We have developed an immersive “Virtual Reality (VR) Resuscitation Training” to train the theoretical knowledge of CPR in which trainees must save the life of the patient in a virtual environment. This paper presents a randomized controlled study with a pre-posttest design to explore whether a VR enhanced curriculum improves high school students’ theoretical CPR knowledge. Forty students without previous CPR experience in the past year were randomly assigned to either the VR group or the standard group. The VR group had a significant higher increase of correct answers in comparison with the Standard group. More importantly, the gain in score on taking the correct sequence of CPR steps was significant favouring the VR-enhanced protocol over the Standard protocol. Therefore, the use of a VR training for CPR training appears to be an effective learning method for non-medical students and may be of great value skilling high school students in becoming adequate CPR providers.