The use of Virtual Reality for Veterinary Training

Every veterinarian student undergoes a combination of laboratory courses, classroom-based lectures, and clinical experience as part of his or her education. The latter is usually considered most difficult as it requires not only thorough understanding of the subject, but the ability to apply knowledge, situational awareness, discipline, and empathy, among many other traits. So, is Virtual Reality a good tool to help students to exercise these qualities and skills in preparation for the real challenge?

Let’s take a look:

Issues faced by Veterinary Students during Externships

Tackling Emotionally Challenging Situations

Working with wounded or anguished animals and their distraught owners can be emotionally destabilizing. Veterinary students often find it difficult to cope with the emotional toll of these situations. Some beginners take time to develop strategies for managing their stress and coping under pressure.

Effective Time Management

Clinical experiences can be demanding and often even require multitasking. Balancing clinical responsibilities with academic responsibilities can be cumbersome when working long hours with a heavy workload. This will only become more incommodious when they work at specialist hospitals or with referral centers. 

Client communication

Veterinary students may need to communicate with the client about the health and treatment of their animals. This may sound straightforward, but clients aren’t always receptive to advice, sometimes being stingy, other times skeptical. This can be difficult to handle for those with little experience in customer service.

Applying Knowledge in Real-world Settings

Veterinary students may need to adapt their own approach to fit the needs of individual animals and their owners. Very often, being a good vet is about making good decisions under pressure, despite high stakes. A very necessary practice to cultivate is seeking support from mentors and colleagues when overwhelming concerns and challenges arise. 

How can Virtual Reality Help in Training?

Virtual reality (VR) can be a useful tool for veterinarians in training, as it allows them to practice procedures and techniques in a simulated environment without the need for real animals or cadavers. This can be especially beneficial for procedures that are rare or difficult to perform, as it allows veterinarians to gain experience and confidence before performing them on live patients. The benefits of VR in training can include:

Response under pressure

During an emergency, one wrong decision can lead to catastrophe. Recreating the immense stress of being in clinics and subjecting the students to it in a risk-free simulation acclimates them to the precarity of the situation. They can practice on this platform to regulate their anxiety and trepidation and foster a rational, collected approach to dangerous circumstances. It also gives them the option to disengage if they initially feel overwhelmed.

Simulation of common procedures

VR can be used to simulate veterinary procedures such as spaying or neutering, patient sedation, and wound care. This creates a safe and controlled environment for practice before performance on live patients. This also enables monitoring and evaluation by instructors, so the common, recurrent mistakes can be pointed out and avoided.

Training for rare or difficult procedures

Post-graduation, veterinarians who join remote branches of veterinary practice would be required to perform advanced or complex diagnostic and surgical procedures. Vets that opt to work in unconventional locations such as zoos and wildlife reserves, where they are exposed to unfamiliar species and genera could benefit from relevant preparatory training. Simulating rare or difficult procedures on exotic animals might only be an option using VR. This can be especially useful for veterinarians who do not have access to a large number of cases in their practice.

Familiarity with new equipment

The use of veterinary equipment takes time to master, as moving with precision and confidence does not come naturally to all. The risk of errors cannot be taken on live patients. Hence, acquaintance with the strength of the medical supply or the flexibility needed when using an instrument is imperative.

Collaborative training

This virtual tool would be accessible to students across distances and facilitate collaborative training, allowing veterinarians to work with other professionals or students in a simulated environment. A common issue students face these days that many pre-clinical and clinical placements were cancelled during the pandemic. The rising fuel prices are making it difficult for students to fulfill 26 weeks of work experience. With a setting highly analogous with a clinical rotation training, the simulation should provide adequate immersion and engagement, as well as being an affordable alternative.

Overall, the use of VR in veterinary training can provide a valuable supplement to traditional methods of education and can help veterinarians to gain hands-on experience and improve their skills in a safe and controlled environment.

The Risks and Limitations of using VR in the training of Vet Students

Recreating the visual and aural cues simultaneously present at the trauma bay is no easy task. The consequences of implementing a substandard program that fails to capture the true nature of emergencies can produce unqualified veterinarians. And substituting the real-world experience with a low-stakes, pretend scenario will have its drawbacks as well.

Emotional Desensitization

While acclimating students to emergencies, the university does run the risk of inducing apathy in them. Students that view their patients and clients as artificial entities may find it difficult to empathize with them. In a simulation where every step can be reversed and every scenario can be re-attempted, students may not develop a clear sense of the real-world consequences of their mistakes.

Limited Tactile Feedback

Virtual systems may not provide the same level of tactile feedback as performing the procedure in the real world. This can make it more difficult for veterinarians to develop the dexterity, agility and skill needed to perform the procedure accurately. Additionally, the VR software does not represent textures, thickness of hides, pressure, etc. very well. Haptic feedback is still in development, but is not as of yet commercially available. Hence, injecting a rhinoceros in real life would be a massively different experience from doing it in a Virtual setting. 

Limited application

While VR can be useful for training in certain procedures or scenarios, it may not be suitable for all aspects of veterinary education. For example, it may not be possible to use VR to replicate the experience of working with live animals or surgeries that require precise and steady hand movement. There tend to be lags, glitches and minor incongruities in Virtual settings that can create discrepancies between live procedures and artificial ones.

We also have to keep in mind that the most difficult portion of a veterinarian’s experience is not physical, but emotional and sociopsychological. Euthanizing an animal is never easy; dismissive clients can be frustrating; and handling vulnerable and abused pets calls for patience and sensitivity. These are subjects that cannot be adequately addressed in a classroom. Moreover, the complex and oft-times overwhelming nature of veterinarian work environments cannot be simulated in a virtual reality setting.

While VR can be a valuable tool for veterinarian training, it is important to carefully consider its limitations and to ensure that it is used in conjunction with other forms of education and training.

Successful Development of VR for use in Veterinary Training

Back in 2018, the American Veterinary Medical Association offered Clinical sciences Professor Pedro Boscan and a small team a grant for the creation of a proof-of-concept virtual reality prototype for an anesthesiology machine. Two years later project VetVR was launched for the development and testing virtual educational tools for veterinary medicine. Since the last two years a virtual model to simulate training in anesthesiology basics has been in development.

Students have been voluntarily taking virtual anesthesiology exams to test the VR tool. Lynn Keets, a third year DVM student collecting data from VR trainees says, “I think it offers a novel approach, a different learning pedagogy system … Not everyone is adapted to sit in a classroom, so in that way, it does add value.”

The Royal School of Veterinary Studies’ Digital Education Unit has been using “Immersive Media”, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and 360^o videos to enhance clinical education.

“Once you’ve done the preparatory work to create a 3D model, you can actually do quite a lot with it beyond print it. You can put it into a virtual space for students to explore, you can label it, you can create layers,” says Brian Mather, Senior E-Learning Developer. At the moment the VR environment is viewable but not interactive. But even accessing VR versions of complex techniques can enable students to move more confidently in their practical usage of machinery.

Mathers further comments, “VR is becoming far more affordable and accessible. We are also very close to a stage where technologies merge and gaps are filled. Phone/communication/entertainment/teaching devices all fit nicely into your pocket, and if that device became your virtual reality headset too, that’s when things start to get really interesting.”

We must remember that in everything, the spirit of the veterinarian must remain intact. It is well known that veterinarians are viewed as more approachable, patient, understanding, sympathetic, and sensitive than other medical professionals. This is in part because of the nature of their work, but this mindset and attitude should be fostered and respected. And if virtual reality can help to augment the performance, lower the burden on, or alleviate emotional distress to help veterinarians combat mental health and wellbeing related issues, then such program will need more research, development, and social support.


” Elianne Liong is a staff writer for Celeritas Digital.  She specializes in researching and publishing content related to a range of topics in the animal health and veterinary industry, including technology transformation, business processes, HR, data science, and advanced analytics. “