Emotionally preparing Health Care Assistants for the reality of frontline work

Our client’s challenge

The NHS has a problem. Newly qualified Health Care Assistants (HCAs) are leaving the profession in frighteningly large numbers.

As an essential part of the backbone of the NHS, they’re trained to carry out vital observations, tests and personal care to support other healthcare professionals.

• 400K people left their role in adult social care in 2021/22
• 29% turnover rate
• 43.7% turnover rate for those with less than a year’s experience
• 52.6% of workers under 20 left within a year

Our approach

Recognizing that immersive learning could play an important role in addressing these challenges, Telford College approached us to design and develop a VR experience to give student HCAs the skills they needed to prepare for life in a hospital, care setting, or patient’s home.

As soon as we read the brief, we realized the importance of creating a best-in-class and revolutionary solution to address the healthcare industry’s challenges:

• Minimize employee churn
• Improve the recruitment process
• Improve graduates’ resilience
• Improve the quality of care

Our insight

The emotional pressures of the role: We interviewed trainee HCAs, qualified HCAs, healthcare professionals and the team at Telford College to get a clearer understanding of the challenges. We also spoke to some former HCAs to get their perspectives on job retention. This collaborative approach, which gave us access to busy health care professionals at work, brought one key factor to the forefront:

“Trainees were largely confident in their practical skills, but were not emotionally prepared for the challenges they would face.”

Our solution

Design-led thinking, targeted learning, and powerful storytelling: Our VR experience aims to instill confidence and empower healthcare students, by equipping them with the skills and strategies to manage the emotionally demanding aspects of their work.

Narrative-driven: We carefully crafted three VR scenarios to evoke particular emotions as the different patient stories unfold: a hospital A&E department, a patient’s home and a residential care home. Each informed by our audience interviews, they would feel as real as possible and allow our learners to immerse themselves fully, weaving in key decision points allowing users to make choices in response to the scenario and deepen their engagement.

Having been able to experience emotionally difficult situations in a safe space, outside of the VR, learners discuss their responses in a supportive classroom environment with their peers.

Authenticity: From our visits to college and healthcare settings, we understood the need to carefully consider every element in creating an authentic – and emotive – experience. A cast of talented, professional actors were chosen to voice our characters, with care taken to reflect regional accents and the sensitive nature of our scenarios.

The low-poly design of each environment enables users to focus on the narrative of the main characters and key interactions. Each set uses specific lighting and color schemes, to reflect the mood and remain distinctive.

Authentic spatial sound design and careful orchestration of character proximity also further rooted the user in the scenario and connected them to the virtual world.

What our client said:

“It’s going to change the way we approach education… It’s an absolute gamechanger.”

– Caroline Bastow, Head of Quality and Learning

What the students said:

“I’ve never experienced anything like that. I volunteer at the hospital, so it was just like being there. It was amazing.”

“It has given me an insight into what challenges I might face when I get into nursing.”

“I felt like I was in the hospital. I felt like I was the staff doing all those jobs.”