Virtual Reality Based Mass Disaster Triage Training for Emergency Medical Services

When mass disasters with multiple casualties and injured people happen, the Emergency Medical Service staff needs to have strong organizational skills in addition to medical knowledge in order to efficiently apply triage systems. Currently, it is very expensive for Emergency Medical Services such as the Red Cross to practice these skills, because they need to set up elaborate training scenarios with actors and complex environments. In addition, only one person can train at a time, after which the initial scenario must be restored. As a result, only very few people can profit from the training.This work presents a Virtual Reality training application that aims to replicate the learning experience of the real-life training without the disadvantage of the organizational effort. The application is meant to complement the current training allowing for a more frequent training of mass disaster emergencies for all staff members.