Bow Valley College School of Practical Nursing leads the country in use of Virtual Reality technology

On its own, simulation technology is nothing new in training practical nurses. Interactive mannequins, medical tools and hospital ward replicas have been a staple of nursing education for decades.

But those tools take complex and dedicated space. And what happens when a patient calls out for help? Or their family is in the room and worried? What happens when the patient isn’t responding to the course of treatment proscribed by the doctor?

Using a Virtual reality (VR) simulator created by UbiSim and a commercially available headset, Practical Nursing students at Bow Valley College are able to gain valuable experience with hospital procedures while keeping everyone safe.

“Our students have hours of simulation on campus before they transition to the hospitals,” says Program Chair Clare Howland.

“The reason that we structure it that way is simulation allows learners a chance to take all of that knowledge from their theory classes and start to apply it in a safe environment.”

As of October 2024 roughly 1,000 students have gone through the VR simulators, preparing them for their real-world practicum placements. Before each sim session, students must read patient charts, review medications and treatment plans – unlike in the real world, errors can be corrected without risk to human lives.

“We spend a lot of time talking with other institutions, and specifically universities, about how to actually replace clinical hours with simulation,” Howland says. “There is a huge drive for it - every nursing program is considering it, but where they really get stuck is the logistics.”

Howland has a passion for training tools that goes back years. Over her decade as an emergency room nurse at Foothills Hospital in Calgary, she would use any quiet times to pull together unused mannequins and medical equipment to build training scenarios for other nurses.

She says that the moment she picked up a VR headset and logged into her first sim, she saw its powerful potential.

“Once students get into hospital, even though they're still learning, things are happening at a fast pace and there isn’t always time to get questions answered,” Howland says.

“Their instructor won't always have time to assess the reasoning or thoughts behind their actions, but that's what we can do in simulation. That allows us to see if they are developing those critical thinking skills.”

Professional literature suggests that each hour of VR simulation replaces two hours in hospital – there is no waiting for doctors to come or for patients to get out of the bathroom.  

Nursing faculty at Bow Valley College brought in about 100 VR headsets in September of 2023, figuring out how to incorporate the most students in each sim and how to share the simulator experience with other students in the class. Up to 8 people can participate at a time with some of those acting as “ghosts” who are able to see and move around the sim as invisible observers of the nursing care team.

The simulators can be used almost anywhere there is some floor space – headsets can be wheeled from room to room, connected wirelessly to UbiSim’s software. Even that has required innovation and editing by the team at Bow Valley College, adjusting to metric units and the different scope of practice for Canadian PN’s.

In 2024 Bow Valley College’s program was given a 7-year accreditation standing by the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN), the first in Canada outside of pilot reviews.

With roughly 10,500 simulation hours delivered over the past 13 months, it’s the largest VR program of its kind in the country.

New for Fall 2024, PN Online Rural pathway is designed specifically for learners wanting to learn and work in rural areas of the province. Most classes are online with in-person labs at the Calgary downtown campus.  All work-integrated learning opportunities for this program will be in rural areas of the province in an effort to relieve nursing shortages in those communities.   

Like every study program at Bow Valley College, PN students must complete a Work Integrated Learning component to graduate. Approximately 800 PN students are expected to graduate from Bow Valley College in 2025.

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