Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Veterinary Education: Are We Training Better Veterinarians?

steve mehler

Oct 24

6 min read

By Steve Mehler, DVM, DACVS

How immersive technology is changing the way veterinary students learn anatomy, develop clinical skills, and prepare for real patients.

Veterinary medicine has always been a hands-on profession. Students learn anatomy, practice clinical techniques, interpret diagnostic findings, and eventually develop the skills needed to make decisions for living patients.

Traditionally, this education has relied on textbooks, lectures, anatomical specimens, physical models, cadavers, and supervised clinical experience. These methods remain essential, but they have limitations. Clinical cases are unpredictable, opportunities to practice certain procedures may be limited, and students often encounter complex situations for the first time when an actual animal is involved.

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) offer a different approach: the opportunity to practice, make mistakes, and learn in simulated environments before those skills are needed in clinical practice.

The important question, however, is not whether these technologies are impressive. It is whether they produce better-prepared veterinarians.

Understanding VR and AR

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, virtual reality and augmented reality are different technologies.

Virtual reality (VR) immerses the user in a computer-generated environment, generally through a headset. Veterinary students may enter a simulated operating room, examine a three-dimensional anatomical model, or practice the sequence of a clinical procedure.

Augmented reality (AR) adds digital information to the physical environment. For example, a student examining an anatomical specimen might view a three-dimensional representation of underlying structures superimposed on it.

Mixed reality (MR) combines physical and virtual elements in ways that allow users to interact with digital objects in their real surroundings.

Together, these technologies are often described as extended reality, or XR.

Their shared educational advantage is the ability to make difficult concepts more interactive, visual, and repeatable.

Making Veterinary Anatomy Three-Dimensional

Anatomy is one of the most promising applications of immersive technology.

Students must understand complicated three-dimensional relationships among bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and organs. Yet much of this information is traditionally introduced through two-dimensional diagrams and images.

VR and AR allow students to rotate structures, change their viewing angle, isolate anatomical systems, and examine spatial relationships that may otherwise be difficult to visualize.

Consider the canine stifle. A student learning about cranial cruciate ligament disease needs to understand more than the appearance of an individual ligament. The relationship between the femur, tibia, menisci, joint capsule, and forces acting across the joint is fundamental to understanding the disease and its treatment.

An interactive model can help illustrate these relationships before the student encounters them in surgery.

The evidence is encouraging, although not definitive. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 24 randomized controlled trials found that VR produced a moderate improvement in anatomy knowledge scores compared with other teaching methods. The same analysis did not demonstrate a statistically significant advantage for AR, and the studies varied substantially in their methods and outcomes.

This distinction matters. Immersive technology can be helpful, but its educational value depends on how it is designed and used.

Practicing Clinical Procedures Before Treating Patients

Perhaps the most compelling application of VR is procedural training.

A student learning endotracheal intubation, for example, must understand airway anatomy, equipment selection, patient positioning, and the sequence of the procedure. Simulation allows some of these steps to be rehearsed without placing an anesthetized animal at risk.

A 2024 study published in The Veterinary Journal evaluated a VR simulator for canine endotracheal intubation. Students who used VR alongside instructional videos achieved higher knowledge-test scores than those who learned through videos alone.

However, actual intubation success rates were not significantly different between groups.

That finding illustrates both the promise and the limitations of simulation. Improved understanding does not automatically translate into improved performance on a living patient.

VR may help students prepare for a procedure, but clinical competence still requires practical experience, appropriate supervision, and objective assessment.

Can Virtual Reality Improve Surgical Training?

Surgical education presents an especially interesting opportunity.

Procedures such as laparoscopy require hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, instrument control, and the ability to perform tasks while viewing a monitor. These skills are unfamiliar to most beginners and require repetition to develop.

Virtual environments allow students to rehearse certain tasks without consuming surgical supplies or requiring access to an operating room.

But does this translate into better surgical performance?

A randomized study published in Veterinary Surgery in 2025 compared short-course VR training with conventional video-box training in 12 veterinary students who had no previous hands-on laparoscopic experience.

Both methods improved selected basic laparoscopic skills. However, the physical box trainer performed better on most of its corresponding tasks, while VR offered an advantage for one specific virtual suturing task.

Neither training method produced a substantial improvement in the study's simulated surgical procedure.

The study was small and the training period was short, so its conclusions must be interpreted cautiously. Nevertheless, it reinforces an important lesson: greater technological sophistication does not necessarily mean better training.

For many surgical skills, inexpensive physical trainers may be as useful as, or more useful than, immersive systems.

Augmented Reality and Remote Clinical Instruction

AR and mixed reality may have particular value when an instructor and student cannot be in the same room.

In a study involving 60 veterinary students at Yamaguchi University, researchers compared a mixed-reality head-mounted display with tablet-based instruction during orthopedic and ophthalmic training exercises.

Students reported greater satisfaction with the mixed-reality approach for an orthopedic screw-fixation task, where understanding depth and angle was important.

For corneal suturing, however, students preferred the tablet-based approach.

This suggests that the usefulness of immersive technology may depend heavily on the task being taught.

Three-dimensional visualization may add substantial value for orthopedic anatomy and implant positioning while offering less benefit for procedures that depend on fine tactile feedback and direct manipulation.

Animal Welfare and the Value of Repetition

One of the strongest arguments for simulation is the opportunity to practice without involving a live animal.

A student can repeat a simulated procedure, make an error, receive feedback, and attempt the exercise again. This can help build familiarity before entering a clinical setting.

Simulation can also standardize training. Every student can encounter the same scenario, perform the same task, and be assessed against the same criteria.

This is particularly useful for uncommon emergencies, complex anatomy, and clinical situations that cannot be scheduled conveniently for teaching purposes.

However, the ability to repeat a simulated task should not be confused with complete clinical readiness.

A virtual patient cannot fully reproduce tissue resistance, bleeding, anatomical variation, patient movement, or the stress of managing complications in real time.

What VR and AR Still Cannot Replace

The greatest limitation of immersive veterinary education is that veterinary medicine is fundamentally physical, biological, and unpredictable.

A real patient does not always resemble a standardized anatomical model. Tissues vary in texture and strength. Surgical landmarks may be obscured by inflammation, hemorrhage, obesity, or previous surgery.

Clinical decision-making also involves elements that are difficult to simulate: communication with owners, teamwork, ethical judgment, financial constraints, and the emotional consequences of medical decisions.

Other practical challenges include:

Cost: Hardware, software licenses, development, updates, and technical support require ongoing investment.
Limited tactile realism: Many systems cannot accurately reproduce the physical sensations of surgery or clinical examination.
Variable educational quality: An immersive experience is only as useful as its instructional design and anatomical accuracy.
Accessibility: Headset discomfort, motion sickness, and individual learning needs must be considered.
Insufficient long-term evidence: More research is needed to determine whether VR and AR improve skill retention, clinical performance, and ultimately patient outcomes.

These are not reasons to abandon the technology. They are reasons to evaluate it carefully.

The Future Is Likely to Be Blended Training

The most productive approach is not to replace traditional veterinary education with virtual experiences.

It is to combine them.

Students might first learn anatomy using interactive three-dimensional models, then practice procedures in VR, refine hand skills on physical simulators, and finally perform procedures under appropriate supervision.

Each method addresses a different aspect of clinical competence.

As these systems improve, future applications may also include simulated emergency teams, individualized feedback, patient-specific anatomical models derived from diagnostic imaging, and rehearsal of complex surgical approaches.

Artificial intelligence may eventually make simulated cases more responsive to learner decisions. But those systems will also need careful validation to ensure that the feedback they provide is accurate and clinically appropriate.

The critical measure of success should not be how realistic the simulation looks. It should be whether students develop knowledge and skills that transfer to patient care.

Final Thoughts

Virtual reality and augmented reality are becoming meaningful tools in veterinary education.

They offer opportunities to improve anatomical understanding, rehearse clinical procedures, standardize exposure to challenging scenarios, and reduce reliance on live animals during the earliest stages of training.

The published evidence supports several of these benefits, particularly improvements in short-term knowledge acquisition and selected technical skills. However, evidence that immersive training consistently improves real-world veterinary performance remains limited.

Veterinary medicine should embrace technological innovation without confusing novelty with educational effectiveness.

The goal is not to produce veterinarians who are proficient in virtual environments.

The goal is to produce veterinarians who are better prepared, more confident, and more capable of delivering safe, effective care to real animals.

That is the standard by which these technologies should ultimately be judged.