Through a set of immersive experiences, it increases awareness of frailty, develops understanding and empathy, enhances observational skills, and deploys assistive technology.
The prototype was developed as part of the Nottinghamshire Frailty & Supported Self-Care training and toolkit programme commissioned by Health Education England in June 2015.
Further development has been funded by Ufi charitable trust as part of VocTech Seed projects 2016 http://www.ufi.co.uk/projects/voctech-seed-projects-2016.
This included user testing by a leading home care provider who are now considering options for roll-out across all of their locations. FrailtySIM is based on a real person, Victor, and forms part of a wider learning programme - Frailty360 - which is aligned with the draft Frailty Core Capabilities Framework.Our Frailty Virtual Reality experience has been used at training events by over 2,000 individuals, from hundreds of different organisations, covering a wide-range of roles, ages, and groups from health, care and wider public sector. 97% of users have rated FrailtySIM as either “excellent” (67%) or “good” (30%) at building empathy.
Comments about the experience include:
“Fantastic. Everybody in care should experience this!” Field Care Supervisor aged 50
The current version of FrailtySIM consists of 4 different learning modules:
• Become Victor - a 3+ minute scenario designed to provide the opportunity to walk in the shoes of Victor, an older person living with moderate frailty. Set in his home environment, the user experiences Victor’s frailty-related impairments and works through a set of prompts connected to everyday activities. It provides an immersive and frequently emotional experience.
• Being Jane - the aim of this module is to promote observational skills with users asked to look out for clues about what’s important to Victor, his current state of mind and potential risks and sources of resilience within his home environment.
• Walking Through Frailty - enables users to compare the impact of different levels of frailty (Fit, Mild, Moderate and Severe) on their ability to carry out basic everyday tasks. At the end of each level, users receive an audio and text ‘debrief’ which includes insights about the type of support that is most relevant to someone living with that level of frailty.
• Interactive Frailty Fulcrum - within the main ‘lobby’ of FrailtySIM, users are able to gain information about the Frailty Fulcrum, which is a multi-dimensional model for frailty.
In addition to the Virtual Reality, video resources including Instructions, Clues walkthrough and Frailty Fulcrum animation are available as part of the learning resources, along with worksheets to support reflective learning.The hardware required is a “Google cardboard” compatible VR headset and a Smartphone of sufficient display quality (5.1 - 5.5 inch screen and at least 1080 x 1920 pixels) and processing power (e.g., Quad-core 2.5 GHz) and the relevant sensors for VR (Gyrometer, Accelerometer, proximity, compass).
You can find out more at http://www.frailtytoolkit.org/frailtysim-vr/ and you can also access the Frailty Fulcrum and learn more about frailty at http://www.frailtytoolkit.org/frailty-overview/ #Frailty, #Training, #Person-centredcare