Use of Second Life, the popular free virtual environment “sandbox”, in medical education has been discussed before. It’s different, however, to hear an actual MD talking about how great it is. In a new article by Peter Yellowless MD, he discusses his experiences using and creating medical training environments in Second Life with great results:
I have been using Second Life as a teaching and learning environment for several years now. With colleagues I have created a “virtual hallucinations” environment, which demonstrates the lived experience of psychosis and allows participants who travel through the environment to experience both visual and auditory hallucinations; visions and voices. We used this environment to teach this experience to our medical and psychology students.
But that’s not all:
With the California Department of Health and other colleagues I have created a virtual bioterrorism crisis clinic to train health workers, and more recently, as part of our Health Informatics Certificate Program, with University of California Davis Extension, we have taught informatics students in a virtual conference center on our own private island; Davis Island. Students find the environment straightforward to learn to navigate, and within a week of our informatics students being introduced to the environment they were able to travel and tour around Second Life with the rest of us with ease.
Hit his website for the full story.
via InformationAgeHealth: Virtual Reality Medical Education in Second Life.
