Abstract:

Although nursing students are very well drilled in CPR techniques, they lack training in another life-saving skill, viz. detecting suicidal thoughts and having a conversation with a suicidal person. Nursing students, nursing professors, health professionals and the Flemish centre of expertise in suicide prevention all recognize this gap in competence and skill. This lack is also a concern to the government. Therefore, training health care professionals in suicide prevention is one of the six strategies Flanders has put forward to lower the suicide rate by 10% by 2030.

Because of this urgent need, forces have been joined to develop a specific training tool for nursing students: the VR-tool. It has a proven record of positive learning effects in simulation-based education. Simulation-based education creates a realistic context, in which students simulate how they would behave in a real life situation, but without the responsibility and the nervousness. It is assumed that this environment creates a safer learning setting. Students can learn at their own pace, they can make mistakes without any damage, and they can repeat the exercise as much as they need to. Thanks to this VR-tool there is neither peer pressure nor the feeling of judgement, as it occurs in a traditional teaching setting of role playing for developing communication skills. Useless to say this VR-tool is not a replacement but a substantial complement to traditional lessons.

How to go about? When the user puts on the VR glasses, the user sees a patient in a patient room. A nurse enters the room and tells the patient that she has good news and that he can go home. The patient, however, does not receives this message as good news… It is up to the user to pick up the conversation. The user can do so by selecting the most appropriate question from a menu of three options. The three options are based on the underlying clinical reasoning regarding suicide prevention. Depending on the chosen path, the user will see a different storyline. Less preferred options are explained and it is shown why this option is lacking. The duration of the exercise is approximately 15 minutes, during which both the detection of and the interventions for suicidal thoughts are practiced as well as the follow-up of the patient.

The impact of this training on the learning process and the self-assessing clinical competences of the participants are evaluated by means of a questionnaire and focus groups. The preliminary results from the impact analysis have exceeded our expectations: 95% of the participants (n = 40) state they have learned a lot about suicide prevention, 84% of participants say they are more willing to help a person who thinks of suicide, and 97% would recommend our VR-tool to other students. Qualitative feedback has also been positive: “ I was fully immersed in the story, which made me more attentive to the event than in a regular class”, or “It was a very interesting experience. This is the first time I have worked with VR. You can make a mistake and see how the patient reacts to it. From the mistake you can learn.”

This application was the first of its kind in Flanders. More practice and experience is necessary to further develop the tool, e.g. possibility of being able to conduct the conversation yourself or to choose from multiple scenarios. The tool will be further tested and refined this year. We hope to report upon the research results by June 2022.

Keywords:

VR, simulation-based education, suicide prevention, health science, nursing science.