Background: Cinematic-virtual reality (cine-VR) has demonstrated improvements in cultural self-efficacy, diabetes attitudes, and empathy among healthcare providers, but its impact on health professional students is unknown. The purpose of the single-arm pre-post study was to examine the feasibility of this cine-VR diabetes training program as well as to assess changes in cultural self-efficacy, diabetes attitudes, and empathy among health professional students.
Method: Participants viewed 12 cine-VR 12 simulations about a 72-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes. Pre-training and post-training, they completed the Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool, Diabetes Attitude Scale-3, and Jefferson Scale of Empathy.
Results: All 92 participants completed the full training. No participants reported technological difficulties or adverse events. For the assessment, 66 participants completed the pre-post measures for a response rate of 71.7% (mean age = 21.1 ± 1.9 years, 82.6% [n = 57] women; 84.1% [n = 58] white). We observed positive improvements in all three cultural self-efficacy subscales: "Cognitive" (t value = -4.705, P < .001), "Practical" (mean change = -.99, t value = -4.240, P < .001), and "Affective" (t value = -2.763, P = .008). Similarly, we observed positive improvements in four of the five diabetes attitude subscales: "Need for special training" (Z = -4.281, P < .001), "Seriousness of type 2 diabetes" (Z = -3.951, P < .001), "Value of tight glucose control" (Z = -1.676, P = .094), "Psychosocial impact of diabetes" (Z = -5.892, P < .001), and "Attitude toward patient autonomy" (Z = -2.889, P = .005). Finally, we observed a positive improvement in empathy (t value = -5.151, P < .001).
Conclusions: Findings suggest that the cine-VR diabetes training program has the potential to improve cultural self-efficacy, diabetes attitudes, and empathy among health professional students. A randomized controlled trial is needed to confirm its effectiveness.
Keywords: cine-VR; cultural self-efficacy; diabetes attitudes; empathy; virtual reality.