Virtual Reality in nursing education goes mainstream
The uptake of VR is a trend that nursing educators have seen coming, and they predict the technology will power the classroom of the future. By 2025, VR is expected to achieve mainstream adoption in nursing programs across the United States, according to research conducted by Wolters Kluwer and the National League for Nursing (NLN).
And the reasons couldn’t be more critical to the future of the profession. In 2021, nearly 92,000 qualified nursing school applicants were turned away due to a confluence of factors – from a lack of sufficient clinical sites and classroom space, to budget and resource constraints.
Scaling nursing education with VR
Against this backdrop, it’s been predicted that the United States needs 450,000 new nurses to make up for the shortfall of nurses. We need to double the number of new graduates entering and staying in the nursing workforce. Every year for the next three years.
Is it possible? Only if we can all get behind a new way to prepare nurses for practice. VR is poised to help scale up the number of new, practice-ready nurses.
Download the infographic below to learn more about the timelines to adoption based on a survey of nursing school deans, program directors, and faculty conducted by Wolters Kluwer in collaboration with the NLN.