Background: Improving knowledge of common ocular diseases can lead to earlier detection and better health outcomes. However, both student and patient education face significant challenges: medical curricula allocate limited time to ocular diseases and readability of patient education materials frequently exceeds patient comprehension. Videos have been shown to be a more accessible medium of education, and virtual reality (VR) videos specifically offer a novel approach to education by allowing viewers to experience eye diseases from the patient's perspective, rather than merely presenting information. This study aims to examine how virtual reality videos impact patient and student understanding of common ocular diseases, as well as subsequent behaviors and beliefs.

Methods: Patients and students were analyzed independently in this pilot study. 189 patients were surveyed in 2020 at a blood pressure screening event, while 299 students were surveyed during a virtual eye health teaching session. Both surveys contained virtual reality videos created by the National Institute of Health (NEI) on four common ocular diseases: cataracts, glaucoma, diabetes, and age-related macular degeneration. Wilcoxon signed rank tests analyzed participant responses before and after watching the videos. A stepwise multiple regression analysis assessed the presence of predictor variables.

Results: The VR videos significantly increased patient understanding of the 4 ocular disorders (Mdn = 4.00 pre-survey vs Mdn = 5.00 post survey, z = -8.93, p<0.001), motivation to receive annual eye exams (45.45%, N=85), and likeliness to recommend having future virtual health visits that include videos like these (80.85%, N=152). Students also significantly increased their comfort with understanding eye pathologies (p<0.001). Despite most students having no prior eye care experience, the majority felt more motivated to learn about ocular diseases (86.96%, N=240) and believed the videos should remain a part of the curriculum (80.36%, N=221).

Conclusion: The findings of this pilot study demonstrate that virtual reality videos may help improve comfort in understanding common ocular pathologies among both patients and medical students. Current literature already explores the role of virtual modalities in improving patient comprehension and student surgical training, but our study is unique in that it implements virtual reality videos that simulate the patient’s experience of an ocular disorder. This added awareness may be more beneficial to patient and student knowledge and empathy. Moving forward, future research should explore long-term effects of these videos and sample more locations. Through improving medical education, we can strive towards higher quality patient care and improved patient outcomes.