Enhancing creativity and cognitive skills in healthcare curricula: Recommendations from a modified delphi study on virtual reality integration

The incorporation of Virtual Reality (VR) into healthcare education presents significant opportunities to enhance creativity, critical thinking, and overall learning outcomes, yet comprehensive frameworks to guide its implementation remain sparse. To address this gap, this study employed a three-round modified Delphi process with international healthcare and technology experts, aiming to establish evidence-based guidelines for effectively integrating reusable VR resources into healthcare curricula. In Round 1, nine thematic categories emerged from open-ended questions, encompassing theoretical frameworks, instructional design, resource development, and organizational strategies. In Round 2, 62 statements derived from these themes were refined and rated by experts, focusing on key elements such as managing cognitive load, improving learner engagement, and fostering affective and psychomotor skills. Round 3 validated and prioritized the recommendations, aligning them with models like the Cognitive-Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL). Key results include practical strategies to enhance learning across cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains, ensuring that VR resources are co-created with learners, integrate smoothly into existing systems, and leverage immersive learning analytics to continuously assess and optimize their impact. By offering structured guidance on pedagogical approaches, theoretical underpinnings, and resource design, this study provides educators and policymakers with actionable tools for evaluating, scaling, and critically comparing VR applications in healthcare education. Ultimately, these recommendations support VR's transformative role in reimagining healthcare training, encourage the development of creative problem-solving skills among learners, and call for sustained academic inquiry to fully realize VR's benefits in this field.