Virtual reality in the performance of healthcare professionals

Background: Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive technology of growing importance in medical education and clinical training. Objective: To analyze the available evidence on the impact of VR on the performance and training of healthcare professionals. Material and methods: A literature review (August 2025) was conducted in PubMed and Google Scholar, using the terms “virtual reality,” “health,” “simulation-based training,” and “medical education.” Results: The analyzed evidence shows that VR significantly improves cognitive, technical, and psychomotor skills in students and healthcare professionals. Several studies report increases in knowledge acquisition, reductions in procedure completion time, greater adherence to protocols, and increases in satisfaction and self-confidence. Conclusions: VR is an innovative and effective tool for continuing education and training in the healthcare field. Recent literature supports the notion that it matches or surpasses traditional methods across multiple educational indicators. However, the available evidence still exhibits methodological limitations across studies and a lack of data on its impact on long-term clinical outcomes, such as mortality and complication rates.