Disaster education is essential in nursing students to prepare students for crises. Virtual reality (VR) technology offers a promising training approach. To estimate the difference in performance, time to complete performance, cognitive learning, and self-efficacy of nursing students in VR disaster education compared to traditional education only. PubMed, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and ProQuest Dissertations 95% confidence interval CI; -52.06 to -38.30), with no evidence of heterogeneity (I 2 = 0%). No significant difference was observed between VR and the control group for performance score (MD: -0.14; 95%CI; -1.98 to 1.70; I 2 = 96%) and cognitive learning (MD: 3.56; 95%CI; -3.12 to 10.25; I 2 = 99%), both showing considerable heterogeneity. No safety concern was reported in any of the included studies. VR-based disaster education has the potential to improve completion times in decontamination scenarios, which may contribute to enhanced nursing students’ efficiency in emergency response. However, its effects on performance scores and cognitive learning remain inconclusive, due to non-significant pooled estimates and considerable heterogeneity across studies. Further high-quality RCTs with longer intervention durations are needed to validate these findings.
Madsong et al. (Mon,) studied this question.