Team Name
Pastafarian Coders
Timeline
Summer 2023 – Fall 2023
Students
- Aman Hogan-Bailey
- Andrew Mondejar
- Charles Pham
- Mark Holcomb
- Yusuf Cavus
Sponsor
Jennifer Roye (UTA Smart Hospital)
Abstract
In order to give nursing students more experience with palliative care, the VR Palliative Care system is designed to walk students through a case study consisting of four scenarios following a patient from terminal diagnosis to death. The VR Palliative Care system is intended to be an immersive nursing simulator that runs on Unity using virtual reality technology.
Background
The purpose of this project is to complete a virtual reality system that can be used by the University of Texas at Arlington’s nursing program (and possibly beyond) to train students in palliative care. Students in UTA’s Nursing department need experience providing quality end-of-life care to patients with terminal conditions, as well as experience consoling the families of deceased patients.
Nursing students have limited opportunities to practice palliative care in real clinical settings largely due to the limited availability of patients in need of such care. To address these challenges, a virtual reality system based on case studies encountered by the UTA nursing department is currently under development. The system will provide students with on-demand practice in end-of-life care based on case studies provided by the UTA Nursing department. The system can enhance nursing students’ communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and empathy skills. It can also increase their confidence, readiness, and satisfaction in clinical practice. The system will be integrated into the nursing curriculum as a supplement to traditional simulation and clinical practice. The goal of the project is to improve the quality of palliative care provided by healthcare professionals.
Project Requirements
Main Menu
Tutorial (ensure students have the opportunity to learn the controls)
VR Sickness Warning
Scenario 1 (initial diagnosis and treatment)
Scenario 2 (home safety inspection prior to home hospice care)
Scenario 3 (home hospice care checkup)
Scenario 4 (responding to death of the patient)
Motion Sickness Mitigation
VR Headset Independence
Operating System Compatibility
System Overview
The VR Palliative Care Simulation consists of three sections (layers): “Managers,” “Game Objects,” and “Data Objects.” The manager layer controls how the game operates. The Game Objects layer displays the types of game objects that will be used in the game. The Data Objects layer shows how the data will be collected and stored. Each layer interacts with each other by sending messages/using each other to run the game.
Results
Demo of scenario 1:
Future Work
Unifying in-scenario progress data with end of scenario grader/feedback data and removing hard-coded numbers in feedback text
Adding more dialog and making the system more realistic
Reorganizing the directory structure of the project to better identify which scenario-specific scripts apply to which scenario.
General testing and debugging
Acceptance testing
Project Files
Project Charter (link)
System Requirements Specification (link)
Architectural Design Specification (link)
Detailed Design Specification (link)
Poster (link)
