NHS pilot uses virtual reality to tackle racism and discrimination among staff
In one scene, black nurse Tunde is told by his manager that personal protective equipment (PPE) is stored overnight to prevent theft during night shifts. This is a pandemic, as ethnic minorities are more likely to work at these times.
In another case, an Asian female doctor named Jasmine is fired by an HR manager after she applied a double standard regarding shift changes during the pandemic over childcare, something her white colleagues were allowed to do..
These are some of the discrimination scenarios outlined in a new form of training for NHS staff, designed to create a greater understanding of the experiences of colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds.
The training, called “Walking in the shoes of…”, involves participants wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset and watching videos showing examples of racism and discrimination by actors in an NHS setting.
The clips are based on the transcripts of 133 interviews with NHS staff describing their own experiences of racism at work, collected during the Tidal studya project by academics from Kings’ College London that examines how incidents of discrimination within the NHS are linked to existing inequalities in healthcare.
The training was developed after warnings that the NHS is facing a mass exodus of black, Asian and minority ethnic doctors due to “persistent” and “intolerable” levels of racism in the workplace. However, research shows that white nurses are twice as likely to be promoted than their black and Asian colleagues.
Prof Stephani Hatch, professor of sociology and epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, said the VR training trialled was an “incredibly creative” way to deliver immersive training to help staff across the NHS better understand their experiences.
“VR allows the user to experience discrimination in some cases, but also to witness cases of discrimination… and VR gave us the opportunity to use creative methodologies.”
So far, 270 staff from the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have completed the training.
The academics behind the project believe it should be rolled out across the health service, with Hatch saying: “It’s really important to us that this training gets to management and leadership. I’d love to see a room full of mid-level managers doing the training, because they can often be the gatekeepers.”
Dr Rebecca Rhead, lecturer in community and mental health at Kings University, said when making the VR videos it was important to speak directly to NHS staff on the frontline to understand their experiences.
“Our research gave us a real insight into the toll their experiences in the workplace had taken on their mental health and the impact it had on their ability to provide care and continue working in the NHS,” Rhead said. “This is partly why virtual reality in this form is so powerful, because it eases the burden of reliving their trauma and spares them the exhaustive emotional labour of having to tell people about their sometimes harrowing experiences.”
Helen Walsh, a media and VR producer at Maudsley Learning who helped develop and implement the training, said the new training had helped to “address some of the underlying issues that aren’t often talked about by giving people a voice and making sure others listen to that voice too”.
She added that the training could also directly address the discomfort that bystanders feel when confronted with instances of racism. She said: “I hope that the training that we will be delivering will help to address some of the inequalities that exist in workplaces like the NHS. The video training showed that many people have been bystanders in situations like this, and in these training scenarios you are actually forced to be a bystander because you can’t engage.”
NHS England was asked for comment.