The University of New England was Embodied Labs’ first customer in 2016. They started by using Embodied Labs experiences with their osteopathic medical students on one campus, and have since expanded to using labs with medical, nursing, physician assistant, and PT/OT students across both of their campuses.
Faculty value being able to incorporate technology into their curriculum and engage students with experiential learning. They also value the content of the experiences themselves, which utilize the power of immersive to put students into 1st-person realistic scenarios with which they would not otherwise be able to engage. Students are now used to simulations as part of their healthcare curriculum, but Embodied Labs’ immersive experiences give them a feeling of presence and reality from the point of view of the patient that is unlike anything else they have experienced. Medical, nursing, and other allied health professions commonly wish to provide more geriatrics education in their curriculum, but are often unable to due to time. Embodied Labs has a robust content library such that these experiences can be incorporated across the curriculum, fast-tracking knowledge and understanding in the most relevant issues pertaining to older adults.
What the VR labs provided our students was the chance to embody the patient experience which, in effect, humanized the patient for the students. Instead of reading about a case study of a patient with progressive Alzheimer's, they became the patient with progressive Alzheimer's.
In the future, students working in a clinical setting will hopefully have more empathy, compassion, and understanding for their clients because they may see that patient as a complex person instead of a clinical diagnosis alone.
With simple set-up, in-depth resources and a dedicated support team ready to answer any questions you may have, it's easy to make Embodied Labs a part of your learning and training.