A new app is set to support nurses considering a career in adult prisons by allowing them to experience what their role may be like using immersive virtual reality.
The app enables nurses to learn more about prison healthcare through a series of interviews with a mental health nurse, healthcare officer and GP, and provides oversight of the benefits and challenges they can expect to face.
It also features five real-life scenarios based on interactions between patients and practitioners, with learners able to test their skills and experiences by choosing the most appropriate action. The five scenarios are: orientation to placement opportunities in health and justice; optimising safety and reducing risks; managing difficult situations using conflict resolution and re-escalation techniques; managing pain relief; and caring for people who are prisoners in wider healthcare settings.
The app was developed in partnership with Health Education England’s (HEE) national nursing and midwifery directorate and NHS England’s National Health and Justice team. It is available to be used with a virtual reality headset or on a phone with a cardboard headset, and it can be accessed via HEE’s elearning for healthcare hub.
Patricia Howe, HEE’s Simulation and Immersive Technologies Programme Manager in the Technology Enhanced Learning team, said: “Immersive learning experiences can play a significant role in helping people considering a placement setting or career change to make an informed decision to what their new role might look like.
“The immersive technology of the VR360 app offers the closest possible experience outside a real-life prison environment. We hope that nurses who are interested in a career in a prison healthcare setting find this a useful tool in making their decision.”
Ellie Gordon, HEE’s Senior Nurse for Learning Disability and Mental Health, National Nursing and Midwifery Directorate, added: “We wanted to be able to show students that prison clinic rooms look like any other clinic room, and a prisoner is a person with health needs, it’s just in a different setting.
“Once you get used to having the head set on and let yourself relax, it is a transformative experience, and you feel as if you have been transported into a prison clinic room.
“This event needs to be experienced, even if just the once, you never know you might find prison nursing is your new calling.”
