On May 7, 2024, Dr. Tyler Andre of Simx and Will Belk from Air Methods joined Lance Bailey for a webinar hosted on the Healthy Simulation Website. The Webinar is titled “Above and Beyond Reality: How Air Methods Elevates Critical Care Training with SimX VR.” Below are some detailed highlights from the webinar. You can access and watch a recording of the webinar through HealthySimulation.com

https://learn.healthysimulation.com/course/courseair-methods-vr-training-simx

Air Methods Ascend & SimX VR

Air Methods Ascend is a program created by Air Methods, a premiere medical training company for EMS and air transport personnel. Air Methods Ascend was specifically designed to provide only the highest quality education for clinicians. With Ascend, Air Methods specialty trainings that were previously only offered internally are now accessible to anyone who wants to attend. Air Methods is dedicated to making its content interactive, engaging, and accessible to anyone who needs it. With the world’s largest staff of EMS and critical care educators, Air Methods Ascend is one of the most advanced training programs that allows clinicians to operate at the top of their licensure, provide the best possible patient care, and maintain the required CES for recertification. 

Air Methods has been a SimX customer for multiple years and teamed up with SimX development to create custom virtual patient encounters for their EMS and critical care training curricula. Air Methods has successfully integrated the SimX system into their regular training sessions to practice essential team-building skills and make their training more accessible through remote, in-headset simulation sessions. 

 

A New Partnership

SimX has partnered with Air Methods Ascend to provide remote VR scenario facilitation and education to individual learners and large-scale institutions. SimX has opened its entire library of 250+ virtual patient encounters to the Ascend program, so Will Belk and his team can guide learners through any SimX scenario. 

With over 80 highly skilled physicians on their simulation education team, Ascend can provide learners with customized VR instruction, facilitation, and training for any learner across any specialty. Ascend has opened Air Methods services beyond their regular community of medical trainees. Interested in going above and beyond reality with Air Methods Ascend and SimX? Here are some use cases to give you insight into who might benefit from Ascend services:

– A nursing school that needs more faculty sim trainers

– An MS4 individual prepping for USMILE Step 2 CS

– A hospital sim center wanting more focused training

– A physician assistant switching from Ortho to Emergency Dept.

– Short-term coverage for faculty on parental leave

– A flight team that needs a refresher on critical transport

– Community college that wants to try out VR simulation training

– Mass casualty training

With Ascend, individuals, small teams, and large-scale simulation centers can run through any SimX simulation currently in our marketplace. They will also benefit from the clinical expertise of the Air Methods team, who will remotely guide learners and educators through each scenario.

Will Belk of Air Methods said this about the new partnership program between Ascend and SimX: “This is an opportunity to jump in [to VR simulation training]. It’s not just pre-hospital or critical care; whatever setting you’re in, we now have access to the entire SimX library. If one of our 86 physicians on staff doesn’t cover your particular specialty, we can work with your department to make sure that we are covering the content that you need to be covered. All of these things can be completely customized through this program without having to ever leave your facility.” 

Additionally, Dr. Tyler Andre of SimX said this about the program, “we just want to get people better trained and ultimately save lives. We tried to build this in a way so we can get you training as soon as possible using the newest and best technology out there.” 

Try SimX for yourself through the Air Methods Ascend program. If you want to learn more, watch the full webinar at HealthySimulation.com or talk to a SimX representative now!

 

Q&A

Here are some highlights from the Q&A section of the Air Methods and SimX webinar. Each question was asked specifically by one of the webinar participants, and we summarized a few of the answers here.

 

How many learners can get into a VR environment at once with SimX?

The SimX multiplayer capability has no limit! However, if you are trying to provide individualized learning, it’s easier to run scenarios with groups of about 4 or 5 students. This way, you can give them more effective feedback even in scenarios where you have multiple critical care patients to pay attention to. Trying to ensure a good instructor-to-student ratio is much better than trying to cram as many people into a scenario as possible.

 

How long are your scenarios?

Air Methods specific scenarios last about 15-30 minutes. All SimX scenarios have various run times and can be modified depending on the needs of educators and learners. 

 

Are there any concerns with motion sickness?

SimX is designed by a team of healthcare providers, and we have always considered the various health concerns that our users might have when using our program. Here are a few things the SimX team has successfully done to ensure that there are few reports of VR motion sickness.

• Graphics: Users may notice that the graphics in each virtual patient encounter are of a lower resolution than those in, for example, modern video games. We keep the resolution lower on purpose so you can run the program with a higher frame rate and thus greatly reduce lag. Reducing the lag mitigates any motion sickness that users may experience.
• No Teleporting: Many VR users experience motion sickness in programs that require a user avatar to “teleport” to navigate the virtual environment. This means that instead of physically moving to explore your virtual world, you simply point and click where you want to go. Because your eyes tell you you’re moving, but your feet aren’t going anywhere, this creates a lot of motion sickness. Instead, in SimX, we require users to move on their own and walk around the virtual patient to find the right tools and assess the patient in various ways. 

Both Air Methods and SimX users report almost no motion sickness while using our program. Any sickness reported has happened because the headset is malfunctioning or out of focus. 

 

What kind of flexibility do we have while using SimX?

Many of our scenarios in the SimX marketplace were custom-created by our customers. These may be more scripted or “on the rails” because the customers at the time created the scenario with specific objectives in mind. Despite this, none of our scenarios need to be specifically adhered to to be successful. Facilitators can skip or advance states at their own rate so learners can progress in whatever way meets their needs. 

SimX also offers the Virtual Manikin Series, which is completely open and customizable. Read more about the SimX Virtual Manikin Series here