Computer-Supported Expert-Guided Experiential Learning Tool for Advanced Healthcare Skills

Healthcare professionals, just like any other community, can exhibit implicit biases. These biases adversely impact patients' health outcomes. Promoting awareness of social determinants of health (SDH) and the impact of implicit/explicit biases assists healthcare professionals in understanding their patients well and improving care experiences. In addition, it helps to augment the long-lasting empathy and compassion in healthcare professionals towards patients for care treatments while maintaining better healthcare professional-patient relationships. Thus, this research provides Computer-Supported Expert-Guided Experiential Learning (CSEGEL) approach-based tools or mobile applications that facilitate healthcare professionals with a first-person learning experience to augment healthcare skills (e.g., awareness of the importance of cultural humility, inclusive communication proficiencies, awareness of the enduring impact of social determinants of health and impact of implicit/explicit biases on health outcomes, and compassionate and empathetic attitude). The CSEGEL approach-based mobile applications incorporate virtual reality-based serious role-playing scenarios along with a novel Life Course module to deliver digital experiential learning capability to augment the healthcare skills of healthcare professionals and for public awareness. Finally, a preliminary data analysis is provided to demonstrate the positive influence of CSEGEL approach-based mobile applications for improving healthcare skills and measure the required sample sizes (i.e., the number of participants' data samples) for concrete evidence to show effective results.