As I was researching for the essay about VR and education, I stumbled across an academic journal about the uses for VR in the field of neurosurgery. Right now, VR is being used for neurosurgery but only visually to look inside the patient’s mind so the surgeon can mentally plan ahead. But my idea would not only allow you to see visually inside the mind but also perform the surgery itself like you would in real life. This would allow veteran surgeons to practice for an upcoming surgery or to hone their skills while a student can use this to learn the basics and to know to know what to expect. The article titled “Utilizing virtual and augmented reality for educational and clinical enhancements in neurosurgery” by Panayiotis Pelargos
States that integrating VR into the neurosurgery field will “lead to greater efficiency, improved patient care, and minimization of technical errors that are inherent to the surgical learning curve” (Pelargos et al.). You could assess the user’s performance based on the amount of time it takes to perform an operation which most of the time in the operating room, time is of the essence and could be a life or death scenario. Also, you would clearly check for mistakes in the operating procedure since making mistakes in the operating room is one of the main things they worry about, practicing in VR will help alleviate those problems. Lastly, you can assess how well the user knows the steps of the procedure and because neurosurgery includes parts all over the body, you can incorporate many different types of procedure like discectomy, foraminotomy, laminectomy, and spinal instrumentation and fusion. Each procedure involved different parts of the body and different tools, so you can test how well they know each area and what to use. The people that would want to use this application would be hospitals or establishments where they specialize in neurosurgery due to all the benefits that it would bring to the patients and surgeons. Universities such as Johns Hopkins would also buy and use this technology to teach students going into the neurosurgery the basics and get a hands on experience that otherwise they would not be able to get.