Mr Dung Trung Bui1, Associate Professor Tony Barnett1, Dr. Ha Hoang1, Dr. Winyu Chinthammit2
1Centre For Rural Health, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia, 2Human Interface Technology Laboratory Australia, Launceston, Australia
Background: Many rural areas in Australia suffer from the inadequate quantity/ maldistribution of the healthcare workforce. Tele-mentorship can offer a solution to maintain the professional skills for more isolated rural healthcare workers at a distance. It uses a technological communication device to provide instruction from an expert to a less-experienced practitioner at a different geographic location in real-time. The incorporation of Augmented Reality (AR) technology into tele-mentoring systems has been reported internationally. However, we do not know the usefulness of AR in mentoring clinical healthcare professionals remotely.
Aims: To evaluate the AR’s usability in situational tele-mentorship for managing clinical scenarios in a simulated rural health environment.
Methods: This study uses a pre-test post-test design. Three experienced medical practitioners and twelve newly graduated registered nurses are recruited to become mentors and mentees, respectively. Each mentee wears a HoloLens AR device and follows the standard protocols for the treatment proposed for each scenario under remote assistance from a mentor. The scenarios of Acute Coronary Syndrome, Acute Myocardial Infarction, and Pneumonia Severe Reaction to Antibiotics are selected and updated. Simulation labs are set up as rural emergency/medical room to run the scenarios. The outcomes include the perspectives of participants on the AR’s performance, tele-mentorship effectiveness, self-confidence, and skill performance.
Significance: Study findings may have potential for applications in rural/remote areas, as it provides rural practitioners access to expert professional instruction remotely. It also promotes an understanding of the use of advanced technologies in remote assistance in rural health.
Biography:
Dung Trung Bui is a third-year PhD candidate at the Centre for Rural Health, University of Tasmania. His PhD thesis relates to the application of Augmented Reality technology to enhance the remote assistance of healthcare workers in rural and remote areas in Australia. He completed the Doctor of Medicine degree at Hanoi Medical University in 2005 and the Master of Public Health at the Queensland University of Technology in 2017. His passion for medical education and technologies has led him from a clinical medical practitioner to a Continuing Medical Education (CME) manager since 2007 and then motivated him to undertake the current PhD project. In Vietnam, he has worked in Bach Mai hospital, a national leading governmental hospital, with an extensive network of training units of provincial general and specialist hospitals nationwide regarding practical skill training programs to enhance the professional capacities of medical staff there. He is interested in many aspects of public health, particularly in medical training and education, applied technologies in medicine, hospital management and oral care. He has a number of publications written in English and Vietnamese in Tele-mentorship, e-Learning, oral care, healthcare leadership, Augmented Reality technology, and machine learning technique. His ORCID is 0000-0002-9907-8240.