Healthcare professionals are being supported in enhancing delivery of dementia care through a new virtual reality (VR) approach.
Following its recent multi-million investment round, VR training platform MOONHUB has launched ELARA, expanding its established presence in tech into health and social care.
The training curriculum highlights how dementia can affect a person’s behaviour and guides caregivers on how to identify triggers or reasons for distress, as well as offering techniques for enhancing communication to support patient needs.
Post-training, participants are given an overview of their performances via a personal dashboard, enabling organisations to make informed, data-driven decisions on caregivers’ potential and better streamline solutions.
The launch of ELARA builds further on the growing role of VR in health and social care training, with it being increasingly adopted within care.
“Dementia affects everyone differently and can be a very distressing experience,” said Claire Surr, Professor of Dementia Studies and director of the Centre for Dementia Research, Leeds Beckett University, who co-curated ELARA’s new training programme.
“Staff must have an understanding of how people with dementia might see the world, and the impacts of what other people say and do, as well as the physical environment on the person’s wellbeing and behaviour.
“The VR training I have helped curate places staff in realistic care scenarios to help them develop the skills and knowledge to prevent or reduce distress.
“Research indicates experiential dementia training can help increase their empathy and understanding, potentially improving the quality of care staff deliver.
“We hope VR will offer an exciting avenue for providing experiential learning opportunities.”
The content of MOONHUB’s ELARA dementia training aligns with learning outcomes from the Dementia Training Standards Framework, is approved and accredited by CPD standards, and is recognised by Care England.
Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said: “The launch of MOONHUB’s virtual reality training is a very creative way to deliver training for care professionals.
“This new system has the potential to revolutionise the training experience and offers an interactive and comprehensive approach to training and development.”
Dami Hastrup, founder and CEO of MOONHUB, added: “The pandemic has shone a spotlight on health and social care, highlighting its strength and resilience during the most troubling of times.
“We immediately recognised the importance of social care and the need for investment and development in the future. When we first started building the programme, we wanted to ensure we had the right resources and expertise to offer a state-of-the-art experience to those training in the healthcare sector.
“We believe dementia education and training for the health and social care professionals is vital and we’re incredibly excited to be the first to offer an immersive and accessible solution to up-skill learners with the appropriate person-centred care through the power of VR.”
