How Does VR Improve Dental Education?

Virtual and Augmented Reality – are flexible tools that can be used for various purposes, including patient education and other methodologies that manage dental anxiety in people.

Still, there are various implementations of this technology in the professional education field, as a collaborative group of Slovakian researchers reports in a recent paper.

They analyzed 178 existing scientific publications that examine VR technology's effectiveness as an educational tool, highlighting its main advantages:

• Enhanced visualization. VR makes it possible to study the human body precisely using virtual models that present different types of tissues, organs, skeletons, etc. All these structures are interactive – students can rotate them and turn on/off some layers to gain an advanced understanding of organism structure.
• Engaging active learning. Interaction with educational material significantly improves knowledge retention. Some VR models, for instance, can simulate physiological processes of the human body, such as blood flow or nerve impulses.
• Overcoming cadaver limitations. Some countries or institutions may have limited access (due to ethical or financial restrictions) to cadaver examinations, which are essential for medical education. VR models can solve this issue.

Still, researchers note that this educational approach also has some limitations. Thus, the technology can not help with gaining any practical clinical experience nor replace training with physical teeth.  

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