Author(s), Year, Country	Sample; Characteristics; Study Design	VR Simulation Interventions	Outcomes	Follow-Up	Result
Sweigart et al., 2014, United States	N = 800; Nursing students; Non control study	Simulating student nurse and patient avatars interviews in immersive VR clinic with interactive reception area and two examination rooms for mental health assessments	Perception of the reality of the experience, Preparation for actual clinical experiences	4 years	Students with no virtual interview experience generated an average of 7.36 urogenital-sexual system assessment questions with human patients; Students who had completed an avatar patient interview in the virtual environment posed an average of 10.06 questions (range, 0 - 24; p = 0.001). Ninety percent of the students agreed that the virtual environment experience helped them to develop a care plan for subsequent psychiatric patients at the health care agency.
Dyer et al., 2018, Australia	N = 600; Medical and other health professions students; Non control trial	Imitating the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease from patient’s perspective in the immersive VR experiences	Users’ empathy and understanding	3 years	VR simulation experience enhanced students’ understanding of age-related health problems and increased their empathy for older adults with vision and hearing loss or Alzheimer’s disease.
Kidd et al., 2012, Israel	N = 126; Mental Nursing students; Non control study; Quantitative design	Simulating student nurse and patient avatars interviews in VR environment of Second Life® Simulation for mental health assessments	Nursing students’ skills; mental status assessment and communication.	NA	The research results suggested that Virtual reality simulations in online worlds such as Second Life® can be used to teach nursing students skills such as mental status assessment and communication.
Formosa et al., 2017, Australia	N = 50; General public and various psychology undergraduate; Non control study; Quantitative design	Imitating the signs and symptoms of psychosis from patient’s perspective in the immersive VR experiences	Users’ knowledge, attitudes, and empathy	NA	Participants’ scores were significantly enhanced at post-test across each outcome measure, with significant correlations found between a number of the gain and user-experience scores (p ≤ 0.001).
Passig et al., 2011, Israel	Experimental group (N = 40), Control group (N = 40); Teachers; Controlled trial; Mixed study design	Imitating the signs and symptoms of dyslexia from patient’s perspective in the immersive VR experiences	Users’ knowledge and awareness of dyslexia	NA	The research results suggested that experiencing a variety of simulated types of dyslexia by VR can bring about a greater improvement in teacher awareness of the dyslexic pupil’s cognitive experiences than is achieved by viewing a film about dyslexia (p ≤ 0.001).
Jütten et al., 2018, Netherlands	Intervention group (N = 145), Control group (N = 56); Informal caregivers for people with dementia; Longitudinal controlled trial; Mixed study design	Imitating the signs and symptoms of dementia from patient’s perspective in the immersive VR dementia simulator training	Empathy, Caregiver’s sense of competence, understanding of disease	15 months	No significant differences were found between the two groups over time regarding empathy (p ≤ 0.862), sense of competence (p ≤ 0.47). For the participants who underwent the training, the understanding of dementia was enhanced and almost all caregivers indicated that they had learned something from the training.