NHS – Aseptic Technique VR

What is it?

This is one of a pair of VR projects we created for NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) on clean room procedure. While the Clean Room VR experience enables users to practice end to end clean room procedure, from gowning to exiting the room and degowning, this experience focuses on the asceptic techniques to be followed while in the clean room.

NHSBT is the provider of blood and transplantation services to the National Health Service in the UK. Its work includes managing donation, storage and transplantation of blood and organs as well as researching new treatments and processes.

Why is this training needed?

If cell cultures become contaminated because staff do not correctly apply aseptic techniques, those cultures can no longer be used, which has a significant time and cost implication for ongoing work. In the worst-case scenario, a contaminated culture used to treat a patient could result in death. Patient safety is paramount, so it’s important that clean room users have opportunities to practise aseptic techniques before they begin working on in the real world environment.

How does it work?

In  this experience, an expert colleague guides the learner through the five stages of aseptic technique:

• Spraying items into the clean room hatch
• Removing items from the hatch inside the clean room
• Passing items into the clean room cabinet
• Replacing media in the culture flask
• Final tidy up and clean

Each of these stages guides the learner through the correct procedure. The learner must ensure they carry out each requested task thoroughly to avoid potential contamination. At the end of each stage, the learner will receive a rating out of three stars based on how well they completed each action.

The  procedures to be practised by the learner include:

• Spraying surfaces and items
• Wiping surfaces and items
• Moving items between locations
• Removing and replacing bottle caps
• Preparing and dismantling pipettes

As far as possible, the simulation gets the learner to carry out the physical action, for example spraying or wiping a surface, or pressing the trigger on a pipette to control the flow into or out of the device.

Where actions are not practical to carry out with VR controllers, for example removing and replacing caps on bottles and flasks, then the learner selects icons to do this at the appropriate time.

The ability to practise these techniques in VR is invaluable given the scarcity of resources, and the difficulty of practising in a busy real-world environment.