Participating experience of virtual reality teaching among nursing students: a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies

Liu et al. BMC Nursing (2025) 24:315 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-025-02941-0 BMC Nursing Open Access RESEARCH Participating experience of virtual reality teaching among nursing students: a metasynthesis of qualitative studies Kai Liu1, Fang Han2†, XiaoQin Li2, WenFeng Fu2, Yanxue Zheng2*† and Xing Gao2*† Abstract Objective To systematically evaluate research on nursing students’ experience of participating in teaching virtual reality technology. Methods A computerized search of PubMed, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, China Knowledge Network, Wanfang Database, CINAHL(Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), and China Biomedical Literature Service System was conducted to search for qualitative studies on nursing students’ experiences of participating in teaching with virtual reality technology, with a time frame from 2013 to 2023. The quality of the Literature was evaluated using the quality evaluation criteria of Australian JBI evidence-based healthcare centers, and the results were summarized and integrated using the aggregative integration method. Results A total of 9 studies were included, ultimately distilling 37 findings from the original studies, which were outlined to form 7 new categories, yielding three integrated findings: strengths and needs of virtual reality teaching and learning experiences; weaknesses and challenges of virtual reality teaching and learning experiences; and future applications and possibilities of virtual reality teaching and learning. Conclusion By combining the advantages of virtual reality technology with the occurrence of nursing teaching, nursing students can experience immersive experiential learning at any time and any place without time and space constraints, and the overall cognitive pleasure of nursing students to this virtual teaching system is good. However, it is necessary to enrich further the details of teaching content design and optimize virtual reality’s technical experience. † Fang Han, Yanxue Zheng and Xing Gao contributed equally to this work. Kai Liu is first author. Fang Han is equal and first author. Yanxue Zheng is equal and senior author. Xing Gao is equal and last corresponding author. *Correspondence: Yanxue Zheng Xing Gao Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creati vecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Liu et al. BMC Nursing (2025) 24:315 Page 2 of 10 Keywords Nursing education, Nursing students, Virtual reality, Experience, Meta-integration Introduction Virtual Reality (VR) technology utilizes computer technology to create a virtual, realistic environment [1]. Users can interact with this virtual world through specific input and output devices, allowing them to actively participate and influence their actions within the virtual space. Experiencers use user terminals, such as VR headsets or allin-one machines, to view images generated by computer simulations, listen to corresponding sounds, and engage in a multi-sensory immersive experience that includes visual, auditory, and tactile elements. This interaction facilitates a sense of immersion through mutual reactions and feedback [2]. VR technology can visualize abstract knowledge and deepen the understanding of training objects [2]. The perceptual, interactive, and conceptual features of virtual reality technology help students understand and master knowledge more profoundly and faster, make up for the problem of insufficient traditional medical teaching resources, and enhance the teaching effect [3]. Currently, virtual reality technology is applied to anatomy, surgical skills, and surgery in medical education at home and abroad [4]. Tan Huan et al. applied virtual simulation technology in the classroom of medical imaging examination technology, which enhanced the enthusiasm of students to participate in experimental teaching and improved the effect of experimental teaching [5]. Lv Yunli et al. used virtual teaching technology in the operation technology training of gastrointestinal surgical nursing, which effectively enhanced the enthusiasm of nursing students to learn and improved theoretical knowledge and teaching satisfaction [6]. Marie et al. [7]developed a virtual simulator that can train device nurses to prepare preoperative devices for more than 100 surgeries. It is verified that the system can be widely used in training primary or vocational device nurses, and the virtual system allows instrumentation nurses to acquire relevant skills in a safe environment. Furthermore, VR has been used by healthcare workers to improve empathy when nursing patients with autism and dementia [8]. It has also been used for education about deteriorating patients [9]. Nursing is a specialty that serves patients and requires many operational skills in clinical work. Traditional plane teaching materials lack interactive and three-dimensional characteristics; giving the training object substantive and efficient guidance is complex. VR technology can make the skills training process with better authenticity and feedback, increase the effect of skills training, and effectively reduce the risk of clinically accurate operation to the patient.VR learning makes the experience of the traditional anatomical atlas more focused, enjoyable, and effective than conventional and improves the experience of the person’s learning motivation [10, 11]. Virtual reality technology has been initially explored in several clinical nursing fields. For nursing students, virtual reality technology is currently used to learn nursing operation skills and develop nursing competence in complex scenarios [12]. The technology is now more widely used in nursing education in developed countries [13]. However, at present, domestic and international studies mostly use quantitative methods to assess students’ learning outcomes, and there are fewer studies on students’ subjective perceptual experience in the process of using VR for learning, which can not y (...truncated)