eXtended Reality Enhanced Mental Health Consultation Training

Objectives Given the growing societal and healthcare service need for trained mental health and care workers, coupled with the heterogeneity of exposure during training and the shortage of placement opportunities, we explored the feasibility and utility of a novel XR tool for mental health consultation training. Design Evaluation of a novel XR training simulation for mental health consultation. Setting Mental health and primary care training environments. Including Universities and NHS hospitals. Participants A total of 123 participants completed the study, including Mental Health Nursing trainees, General Practitioner Doctors in Training, and students in psychology and medicine. Interventions We set out to evaluate a training simulation created through a collaboration between software developers, clinicians and learning technologists. Participants engaged with a virtual patient, ‘Stacey’, through a virtual reality or augmented reality head-mounted display. The tool was designed to provide trainee healthcare professionals with an immersive experience of a consultation with a patient presenting with perinatal mental health symptoms. Users verbally interacted with the patient, and a human instructor selected responses from a repository of pre-recorded voice-acted clips. Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures The primary outcomes were cognitive and affective learning outcomes, including understanding, motivation, and anxiety related to mental health consultations. Secondary outcomes were considerations towards careers in perinatal mental health, experiences of presence, system usability. Results We found significant enhancements in learning metrics across all participant groups. Notably, there was a marked increase in understanding (p<.001) and motivation (p<.001), coupled with decreased anxiety related to mental health consultations (p<.001). There were also significant improvements to considerations towards careers in perinatal mental health (p<.001). Conclusions These findings show, for the first time, that XR can be used to provide an effective, standardised, and reproducible tool for trainees to develop their mental health consultation skills. We suggest that XR could provide a solution to overcoming the current resource challenges associated with equipping current and future healthcare professionals, which are likely to be exacerbated by workforce expansion plan.