Medical training is evolving, and Virtual Reality (VR) is playing a crucial role in making clinical education more accessible, immersive, and effective. As part of our Voices of Impact campaign, we’re sharing real experiences from medical professionals using XR to enhance learning and patient care.
Dr. Chris Dadnam, an NHS clinician with over a decade of experience, shares how VR is revolutionising training—offering flexibility, reducing costs, and improving preparedness for real-world scenarios.
Making Training More Accessible and Cost-Effective
Traditional medical training often involves logistical challenges and hidden costs. Clinicians must travel, find parking, and coordinate their schedules around training days—only for sessions to be cancelled if attendance is low.
“VR allows users to get involved in training without worrying about travel, traffic, or parking. It makes learning more accessible.”
VR eliminates these barriers, offering on-demand training that fits into busy clinical schedules. It also removes the risk of wasted resources—if a consultant-led session is under-attended, the costs are lost. With VR, training can happen anytime, anywhere.
“If a consultant comes in for a Training Day and not enough trainees turn up, that day is wasted. With VR, that’s no longer an issue.”
Beyond Training: Combining Education with Research
Medical education is built on teaching and research, and VR is one of the few training methods that actively supports both. Not only does it provide a safe, immersive learning environment, but it also allows researchers to study how training methods impact clinical performance.
“VR is a combination of teaching and research—it helps us learn, build leadership and teamwork skills, and continuously improve training approaches.”
With real-time feedback, performance tracking, and the ability to repeat scenarios, VR ensures that clinicians retain skills more effectively than one-time training days.
Customised Training for Real-World Scenarios
One of the challenges of traditional training is that it often does not reflect real clinical environments. Many VR solutions are designed for private healthcare systems, making them less relevant to NHS clinicians.
“i3 Simulations is different—they customise training to reflect real NHS environments. They ask, ‘What does your resus room look like?’ and build it to match.”
This level of customisation ensures that training is realistic and practical, reducing the time spent searching for equipment and improving team coordination during high-pressure events.
“Half the time in an emergency, you don’t know where things are in the resus room. VR training maps out the environment exactly as you’d see it in real life, making everything easier when a real emergency happens.”
Why More Clinicians Are Turning to VR Training
· More Accessible – Trainanywhere, anytime—no travel required.
· Cost-Effective – Eliminates wasted consultant time and training day cancellations.
· More Realistic – Custom-built simulations reflect real NHS environments.
· Better Preparedness – Repeated practice ensures skills become second nature.
Join the Voices of Impact Campaign
Dr. Dadnam’s experience is just one of many. Are you using XR in clinical training? We’d love to hear your story!
Get in touch to share your experience and be featured.
