BridgeFace

I recently spent time on a tropical beach with some students on our health sciences courses chatting about mental well-being, telling bad jokes and watching a colleague try to play the ukulele. The birds were singing, the waves were washing on the beach and the palm trees were swaying in the breeze. While this would be unusual itself, even in tropical Liverpool, the meeting took place in virtual reality from the comfort of my lounge. Our students were on remote clinical placements across the UK –from Portsmouth to Dundee – and we were meeting up via Oculus Quest VR headsets at our regular “beach night” to check in and support their mental well-being.

Virtual reality and well-being
Although 3D VR environments are increasingly being used to support communication and, in some cases, to help with meditation, these aspects have not been combined before to create a holistic support environment. Our evaluation of this solution examined how the interface of these two aspects worked to deliver genuine impact on student mental health.
We developed a VR environment, to provide support for our nursing and allied health profession students because they spend a lot of time away from their friends and family while undertaking clinical placements. The physical impact of shift work and the emotional strain of healthcare work, combined with academic and clinical workloads and assessments, mean that these students are at risk of mental illness. With funding from the Office for Students, we developed a VR environment that included mindfulness meditation resources, a calming and immersive location and a range of safe social spaces where students could meet with tutors or peers.

Beyond healthcare students
Although we designed this environment for our future nurses and health professionals to support them while they undertook clinical placements, the wider applications of this for other people are considerable. While meeting in VR cannot replace the human contact available on campus, it has been shown to provide valuable social and mental well-being support. With the addition of the mindfulness meditation resources, this has the potential to help other students undertaking remote placements as part of their studies.
Eighteenth-century doctors would frequently prescribe their patients a visit to the seaside to cure a host of ailments both physical and mental. It may be that we should now consider virtual version of this therapy…