A Study of Professional Awareness Using Immersive Virtual Reality: The Responses of General Practitioners to Child Safeguarding Concerns

Abstract

The art of picking up signs that a child may be suffering from abuse at home is one of those skills that cannot easily be taught, given its dependence on a range of non-cognitive abilities. It is also difficult to study, given the number of factors that may interfere with this skill in a real-life, professional setting. An immersive virtual reality environment provides a way round these difficulties. In this study, we recruited 64 general practitioners (GPs), with different levels of experience. Would this level of experience have any impact on general practitioners' ability to pick up child-safeguarding concerns? Would more experienced GPs find it easier to pick up subtle (rather than obvious) signs of child-safeguarding concerns? Our main measurement was the quality of the note left by the GP at the end of the virtual consultation: we had a panel of 10 (all experienced in safeguarding) rate the note according to the extent to which they were able to identify and take the necessary steps required in relation to the child safeguarding concerns. While the level of professional experience was not shown to make any difference to a GP's ability to pick up those concerns, the parent's level of aggressive behavior toward the child did. We also manipulated the level of cognitive load (reflected in a complex presentation of the patient's medical condition): while cognitive load did have some impact upon GPs in the "obvious cue" condition (parent behaving particularly aggressively), this effect fell short of significance. Furthermore, our results also suggest that GPs who are less stressed, less neurotic, more agreeable and extroverted tend to be better at raising potential child abuse issues in their notes. These results not only point at the considerable potential of virtual reality as a training tool, they also highlight fruitful avenues for further research, as well as potential strategies to support GP's in their dealing with highly sensitive, emotionally charged situations.

Virtual reality for social skills training

“…Virtual Reality could therefore be an excellent way to practice this skill, as shown by the work of Lok and colleagues (Kleinsmith, Rivera-Gutierrez, Finney, Cendan, & Lok, 2015;Robb et al, 2016). This section describes two experiments by Pan et al (2016Pan et al ( , 2018 which involve VR re-creations of difficult social situations typical of medical practice.…”

A Discussion of the Use of Virtual Reality for Training Healthcare Practitioners to Recognize Child Protection Issues

“…This immersive reality technology has been demonstrated to be an exciting educational tool in clinical consultations through Pan et al's study “The Responses of Medical General Practitioners to Unreasonable Patient Demand for Antibiotics—A Study of Medical Ethics Using Immersive Virtual Reality” (1). Pan et al (2) builds on this earlier work and investigates another scenario in which virtual reality technology could prove useful.…”

“… Background: Virtual reality technology is a rapidly developing tool which has been shown to have exciting prospects in the field of medical education (1). In a recent, subsequent study, Pan et al consider the potential of the same technology in the realm of child protection training and safeguarding issues (2). To build upon the Pan et al (2) study, a panel discussion was held at The Centre for Behavior Change Annual Conference 2018 to discuss the question “Can a virtual reality communication scenario be used to teach General Practitioners and trainees how to recognize and manage child protection issues?.” Methodology: The above study comprised an immersive virtual reality consultation, in which the ability of 63 doctors to pick up covert safeguarding cues was tested in the context of a consultation with an adult patient, where the patient's child happened to be present as well.…”

“…In a recent, subsequent study, Pan et al consider the potential of the same technology in the realm of child protection training and safeguarding issues (2). To build upon the Pan et al (2) study, a panel discussion was held at The Centre for Behavior Change Annual Conference 2018 to discuss the question “Can a virtual reality communication scenario be used to teach General Practitioners and trainees how to recognize and manage child protection issues?.” Methodology: The above study comprised an immersive virtual reality consultation, in which the ability of 63 doctors to pick up covert safeguarding cues was tested in the context of a consultation with an adult patient, where the patient's child happened to be present as well. The study and its findings were discussed at the Centre for Behavior Change 4th Annual Conference, and this paper summarizes the opinions of both the panel and the audience. Viewpoint: Safeguarding is a challenging area of practice where we must listen to the child, and tackle difficult conversations with parents.…”

“…In a recent, subsequent study, Pan et al consider the potential of the same technology in the realm of child protection training and safeguarding issues (2). To build upon the Pan et al (2) study, a panel discussion was held at The Centre for Behavior Change Annual Conference 2018 to discuss the question “Can a virtual reality communication scenario be used to teach General Practitioners and trainees how to recognize and manage child protection issues?.”…”