Care home staff will put on virtual reality headsets to practise preventing falls and stopping infections, as part of a trial to see whether immersive training works better than current methods. Staff training in care homes on hand hygiene and falls prevention is inconsistent and hard to deliver. Traditional methods often fail to engage workers or stick in memory. This project develops a VR training programme co-designed with care home staff and residents, then tests it in six care homes using a pilot randomised controlled trial. The goal is to find out whether VR can improve staff knowledge, skills, job satisfaction, and retention, while reducing infections and falls among residents. If the VR training proves feasible and effective, it could offer a standardised, scalable way to deliver risk-reduction education across the UK’s care home sector. That would mean fewer hospital admissions from falls and infections, and a more confident, stable workforce. The project also produces an implementation toolkit so other care homes and social care settings can adopt VR training without starting from scratch. This is an early-stage feasibility study; a full trial would be needed before any rollout.
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Background: Staff risk reduction education in care homes (focusing on hand hygiene and falls prevention) is vital to supporting resident health. Current training practices are limited, not standardised, and challenging to implement. Virtual Reality (VR) is an immersive, engaging method in education delivery that is being used and adopted in the health sector and care homes. VR may be an effective education tool in care homes, but this research has yet to be conducted. Aims and objectives: This study will be the first stage of a programme of work exploring whether VR risk reduction training (focusing on hand hygiene and falls) in care home staff can increase knowledge, skills, job satisfaction and staff retention, reduce infections and falls and is a cost-effective use of resources. The objectives of this phase are to: • Develop a risk reduction VR training programme on hand hygiene and falls prevention and an accompanying implementation toolkit. • Explore the feasibility, acceptability and usability of the VR training in care homes. • Generate knowledge about VR as a training mechanism in care homes and consolidate and present our knowledge alongside an implementation toolkit relevant to other VR training programmes in similar social care settings. • Develop the methods to inform an RCT to assess the implementation, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the VR risk reduction training programme in care homes for staff satisfaction and retention, and falls and infection control among residents. Methods: This project uses mixed methods across 3 work packages (WPs). WP1: Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE). Care home stakeholders will collaborate in designing the training and toolkit, overseeing methods, reviewing resources for accessibility, supporting recruitment, and co-authoring publications, ensuring the project meets the needs of the diverse workforce and impacts resident care. WP2. Developing the VR risk reduction training and implementation toolkit. A mixed-methods and user-centred design approach will be used to develop the VR training programme (intervention) and toolkit needed to deliver it. We will conduct 20 interviews with VR companies and care home staff to support toolkit development. The VR training will be tested by 15 care home staff across 3 rounds to identify and inform changes that maximise usability and acceptability. We will use the principles of existing VR training developed by the University of Manchester using digital adult learning theory. WP3. A mixed-methods pilot cluster RCT with a waitlist control and process evaluation with 6 care homes to develop the measures and methods to inform an RCT. The waitlist control allows the control group to access the training at the end of their follow-up period. A process evaluation will generate knowledge about VR as a training mechanism in care homes. It will focus on the practicality of using VR, broader impacts (e.g., on residents), contextual considerations and how it might be scaled up. Timeline in months: 1-13: Ethics, toolkit development, completion of WP2 and publication. 14-27: Ethics and WP3 data collection. 28-30: Completion of WP3, publication and buffer time for project completion. Anticipated impact and dissemination: We will publish the findings in high-impact journals and present them at a care home event (i.e., The Care Show) and a healthcare technology conference. Outputs include the VR training and the implementation toolkit.
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