Developing a Virtual Reality Teaching Resource - From Idea to Fruition
We are sharing this to discuss the development of a new virtual reality teaching resource. We developed an innovative resource for medical students to learn about the impact of social determinants of health on how patients manage their long-term health conditions.
What did you do? Why did you do it?
The Continuing Care and Cancer module for fourth year medical students aims to give students an insight into the impact of long-term health conditions on a patient’s life and how primary care can improve their quality of life in a holistic manner. Students are taught about social determinants of health and their impact on individuals from the first year of medical school. Social determinants of health (SDH) are defined as the broad social and economic circumstances that together influence health such as finances, employment status, food security and environmental conditions.1 The medical students attend placements at GP practices across Yorkshire during the fourth-year module. However, as some students will be in affluent, less deprived areas, they may not be exposed to patients who are impacted by social determinants of health. To address this potential inequality in learning we decided to develop a new campus-based teaching session addressing the topic.
A systematic review identified that students prefer interactive, experiential-based learning activities when being taught about Social Determinants of Health.2 Studies have also found that use of virtual reality specifically can increase understanding and empathy towards patients.3 Use of immersive technology in teaching also aligns with the University Student education strategy to ‘Develop the skills staff and students need to take advantage of a digitally-enabled, student-centred, active-learning experience across all programmes.’4
We developed the idea of a ‘pick your own adventure’ virtual reality session where the students follow a patient named Isaac on their journey from their home to a GP appointment being met with dilemmas along the way. Their choice of which option they choose impacts the patient’s outcomes and journey which aims to increase engagement with the resource. As no one from our team has had experience developing VR resources, we met with Charlie James the Faculty Digital Education Academic Lead to discuss whether this idea was feasible. We subsequently embarked on a field trip to capture custom 360-degree images for the resource. The students explore the images taken from the local area along the journey, being asked to consider how social determinants such as housing, pollution, access to green spaces and transport options can all impact health. We worked with the faculty Digital Education Enhancement Service to create the resource on CenarioVR with involvement from the HELIX team.5 Background audio such as traffic noises were added to the 360-degree images to add to the immersive experience
To ensure that the resource felt authentic to real life we wanted to include those with lived experience. We conducted interviews with members of the Patient Carer Community and have embedded audio clips related to SDH throughout the resource. Charlie created illustrations for Isaac and the PCC members who provided audio clips for the resource so they could become part of the Worsley Community.6 This is a virtual community of clinical cases designed to support authentic, cohesive teaching on the MBChB programme which allows students to meet the same virtual patients along the course of their degree.
What was the impact of your practice and how will you evaluate it?
To gain feedback on the session from all interested parties we ran pilot sessions with other educators from the Academic Unit of Primary Care, the intended audience (fourth year medical students) and members of the Patient Carer Community. We used suggestions from the pilot sessions to further improve the resource prior to its introduction into the teaching timetable in the 2026/27 academic year. For example, we are adding illustrations of the PCC members who provided audio clips to the 360-degree images to fully embed them into the patient journey. The feedback from all parties was positive with all the students who trialled the resource reporting that the content felt relevant and authentic to real life scenarios. Student comments included “I was able to be engaged directly in a patient’s journey in an immersive way” and that the session “made you feel involved and invested in the story”. They all agreed that the audio clips enhanced their learning.
We presented the development of the resource at the national Association for Learning Development in Higher Education Conference in June.
We will shortly be submitting an ethics application to formally evaluate the teaching session, and we hope to publish the findings.
How could others benefit from this example?
We hope that this project inspires others to consider whether digitally-enabled teaching resources may improve student learning and to encourage partnership with other teams in the development of new resources. This project has been a collaborative effort and would not have come to fruition without the input of Charlie James, the faculty Digital Education Enhancement team, the HELIX team and the Patient Carer Community. We would also like to thank all those to participated in the pilot sessions for their valuable feedback.
Author
Dr Danya Haboubi (she/her)
Interim Primary Care ICU lead
Clinical Teaching Fellow
Academic Unit of Primary Care
Leeds Institute of Health Sciences
Reference List
1. Public Health England. Chapter 6: social determinants of health, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-profile-for-england/chapter-6-social-determinants-of-health (2017, accessed 29/6/2026 2026).
2. Nour N, Stuckler D, Ajayi O, et al. Effectiveness of alternative approaches to integrating SDOH into medical education: a scoping review. BMC Medical Education 2023; 23: 18. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03899-2.
3. Brammer SV, Regan SL, Collins CM, et al. Developing Innovative Virtual Reality Simulations to Increase Health Care Providers' Understanding of Social Determinants of Health. J Contin Educ Health Prof 2022; 42: 60-65. DOI: 10.1097/ceh.0000000000000400.
4. University of Leeds. Student education University of Leeds Strategy 2020 to 2030, https://spotlight.leeds.ac.uk/strategy-student-education/index.html (accessed 29/6/2026 2026).
5. University of Leeds. HELIX, https://digitaleducation.leeds.ac.uk/helix/ (accessed 29/6/2026 2026).
6. University of Leeds. About the Worsley Community, https://leeds365.sharepoint.com/sites/TheWorsleyParkProject/SitePages/About-the-Worsley-Community.aspx?CT=1782726398994&OR=OWA-NT-Mail&CID=1bb39ae4-82ae-4973-e811-c061eaf54365&SI=NonSentItems (accessed 29/6/2026 2026).