Background: The metaverse, a rapidly evolving virtual environment, offers new opportunities for healthcare education. The effectiveness of the metaverse as a learning tool depends on user readiness and platform characteristics.
Aim: This study aimed to examine the current use of metaverse platforms among nurses and nursing students in South Korea and explore the relationship between user characteristics and their metaverse experience, focusing on presence, usability, and user experience.
Design: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study.
Settings: Registered nurses and nursing students from various healthcare settings and educational institutions in South Korea participated in this study.
Participants: This study included 428 participants, comprising 188 nurses and 240 nursing students.
Methods: Between September and November 2022, participants provided voluntary informed consent. The participants engaged with one of the following two metaverse platforms: ZEPETO (mobile-based) or Gather (screen-based). After four structured exploration phases, the participants completed online questionnaires. These surveys assessed general characteristics, metaverse self-efficacy, sense of presence, usability, and user experience.
Results: Most participants had previous experience with the metaverse and rated their metaverse self-efficacy at 3.60. Nurses scored higher than nursing students in terms of presence, usability, and user experience in the metaverse. Higher work self-efficacy in nurses and academic self-efficacy in nursing students were associated with more positive experiences in the metaverse. Nurses consistently rated higher across all subdomains of presence, usability, and user experience than nursing students. The type of metaverse platform also significantly influenced user experience.
Conclusions: A significant proportion of Korean nurses and nursing students are familiar with the metaverse, reflecting a global trend towards virtual environments in education and healthcare. Although the metaverse holds promise for healthcare education, its effectiveness depends on user readiness, platform characteristics, and the development of a reliable, structured, and user-friendly educational programme.
Keywords: Education, nursing; Educational technology; Metaverse; Nurses; Students, nursing.
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