It is not just for video games. Students at A. R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School are some of the first in the county to use virtual reality to learn how to save lives through CRP training.
The first course was taught at the high school on Thursday morning and they invited NewsChannel 6’s Ashley Osborne to check it out.
The lesson starts even before they put on the VR gear. Dr. Khristi Palladino gave each student a prompt to read to set the scene.
“You’ve heard something crash outside,” Dr. Palladino shares some of the scenario students read before the CPR lesson. . “You see a gentleman coming down the street who appears confused.”
Student Jasmine Yancey describes how Thursday’s CPR lesson is part of a bigger project.
“Our case is located in Haiti where an earthquake happened and we are treating the patients so we are acting as emergency medical responders because that’s what we’re going to be certified to be towards the end of the class,” Yancey says.
“They had to triage the patients,” Dr. Palladino shares more about the course. “They’ve had to figure out agencies that they could contact to get resources, but now we’re going to move into some training on individual patient care.”
In the simulation, students can see the patient and the equipment they are instructed to use.
Technology specialist Jason Stark explains what kinds of things students hear in the headset during the simulation.
“It walks them through where to get help, to point, go get an AED,” Stark says.
Along with the headset, students wear trackers on their wrists which track depth and speed of the chest compressions.
“We can use this as baseline data,” says Dr. Palladino. “Now we can watch them as we go through our unit are they progressing how they would expect? Maybe they are doing well in some areas and not in others so we can focus on that skill.”
“It’s really cool. That I’ve never done before,” says student Alexis weathers about the virtual reality CPR training.
Turns out, no students in Georgia have done this yet. Stark says he checked with the state BOE and they didn not know of any other schools using virtual reality like this.
Student Lance Davidson thinks virtual reality training will better prepare him for a real life situation than the previous methods. “Just because it’s so hands on,” he says.
Stark is looking into incorporating virtual reality in social studies, art and/or P.E. Students could see the world, design fashion or burn calories. Tursday’s CPR lesson could save lives.
