Virtual reality: acquisition of skills in physical examination of nursing students

The Nursing Process (NP) is a fundamental tool for providing quality patient care. It has 5 stages, the first being the assessment, which is considered the most relevant since it supports the NP in the information obtained. In this stage, inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation techniques are used in the physical examination as tools in the assessment process. Virtual reality could be a beneficial intervention to train nursing students in acquiring their inspection and auscultation skills in the cardiac, respiratory, and digestive systems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the didactic strategy with the use of virtual reality in the acquisition of physical examination skills in the cardiac, respiratory, and digestive systems in nursing students. Methodology: a quantitative study of the quasi-experimental design of one group with pre and post-intervention evaluation was carried out. Results: the results in the pre-test related to the median was 5.5, varying positively with an increase in the post-test to 6.3, obtaining that the application of a didactic strategy with virtual reality significantly improves/enhances the processes of acquisition of physical exploration skills in nursing students. Discussion: the results obtained in our research demonstrate that the use of a realistic and low-cost simulator for cardiac, respiratory, and digestive exploration improves the acquisition of skills and stimulates learning in the student, in addition to facilitating the deliberate practice of the procedure before performing it on a real patient. The incorporation of virtual reality in the acquisition of physical examination skills in the cardiac, respiratory, and digestive systems is an instrument that can be added to the nursing curriculum as a new didactic strategy.