Training programs / For clinical educators & simulation leads

For clinical educators and simulation leads: where practice fits the standards and your simulation centre

The standards wording, who runs the debrief, and how a scenario grows from an incident report.

Your questions

Which standards does this help us meet?

The regulator names processes and competence, then asks who practised.

A charge nurse in green scrubs briefs nurses at a ward station, a headset visible among them. — A charge nurse briefs colleagues at the station.

Clinical staff face each other in a hospital corridor, the older clinician wearing a headset. — Clinical colleagues face each other in a corridor.

A nurse in blue scrubs wearing a headset raises her hands mid-sentence in a hospital corridor with arched doorways, an older woman in a floral dress smiling beside her. — A nurse tries the headset in a corridor.

A consultant wearing a headset speaks with a family member in a hospital corridor. — A clinician updates a family in the corridor.

Australia: NSQHS Actions 1.20 and 5.34

Action 1.20 asks a health service to “Implement a mandatory training program” and to “Monitor the workforce’s participation in training”. Action 5.34 asks for processes to “Implement de-escalation strategies”. The assessor’s question under Action 5.36: “How does the health service organisation ensure that the workforce is competent in implementing de-escalation strategies?”

A man waits at the triage bay counter. A first person VR training scenario for healthcare, seen through the headset. — A reply panel beside a waiting patient.

Actions 5.33 and 5.35: triggers and restraint

Action 5.33 asks for processes “to identify and mitigate situations that may precipitate aggression”; Action 5.35, to “Ensure that members of the workforce who implement restraint are trained to do so safely”. A scenario written from a real trigger, then debriefed, is a process an assessor can see. Restrictive practices training requirements.

A participant rehearses in the headset while observers watch from another part of the room. — Observers watch a participant rehearse in the headset.

United States: the Joint Commission and OSHA

For accredited home care, the Joint Commission’s R3 Report Issue 45 asks for “Training in de-escalation, nonphysical intervention skills, physical intervention techniques, and response to emergency incidents”, “at time of hire, annually, and whenever changes occur regarding the workplace violence prevention program”; similar hospital requirements took effect in 2022 (the hospital requirement). OSHA 3148: “Effective training programs should involve role-playing, simulations and drills.”

Your questions

Who runs the debrief?

Your own educators can, once they are prepared to debrief. Running the headset is a separate skill.

A facilitator and participant discuss a completed staged exchange. A VR training scenario for immersive XR. — A participant and facilitator talk after the scenario.

What INACSL asks of a debrief

The INACSL Debriefing Process standard: “All simulation-based educational (SBE) activities must include a planned debriefing process.” Its Criterion 2 asks for a facilitator “capable and/or competent in providing appropriate feedback, debriefing, and/or guided reflection”. Mater Education’s facilitators were trained to run the technology; debriefing capability needs its own preparation, in the format you choose.

A facilitator briefs participants in a workshop room. — A briefing in the workshop room before practice.

What a prebrief and a debrief contain

INACSL: “Prebriefing ensures that simulation learners are prepared for the educational content and are aware of the ground rules for the simulation-based experience.”

Prebrief: the objectives, the ground rules including confidentiality, orientation to the room and the headset, and who calls a stop.
Debrief: the objectives restated, room for reactions, the reasoning behind each choice in the learner’s words, and what to try next time.
Record: who attended and what was practised, for Action 1.20 monitoring.

Your questions

Does it fit our simulation centre?

Standalone headsets, a browser, or a hologram in the lab you already run.

People examine holographic anatomy above a simulation manikin. A VR training scenario for what is mixed reality. — A holographic anatomy layer over a simulation manikin.

In the lab, and in the curriculum

Mixed reality places a patient or family member in your real room, beside the procedural station; VR Library titles run on standalone headsets in a workshop your facilitator leads. For US prelicensure nursing programs, the NCSBN National Simulation Study, which measured simulation in general, found “up to 50% simulation can be effectively substituted for traditional clinical experience in all prelicensure core nursing courses under conditions comparable to those described in the study”. Australian and New Zealand rules: university simulation centres.

A student wearing a headset reaches carefully toward the arm of a simulated elderly patient in a ward bay. — A student at an elderly patient’s bedside.

How a scenario is written from an incident

Steps to take with an incident report, before PTR is involved. Designing a scenario and debrief.

The incident, de-identified; the moment it turned; the trigger, in Action 5.33 terms.
The choice point, the responses a clinician might try, and how the simulated patient answers each.
The debrief questions, who leads them, and clinical sign-off before it runs.

Where practice fits

Programs written for these moments

A man wearing a VR headset stands at a hospital bedside facing a floating panel of choices, a patient in the bed beyond.

Clinical and patient conversations at the bedside

A frontline staff member wearing a headset stands with hands open at waist height, facing a simulated agitated adult.

De-escalation: the seconds before it turns

An employee wearing a headset stands facing a simulated senior stakeholder seated at a boardroom table, leaning back.

Speaking up for safety, in the moment

Nurses discuss a handover at a ward station, a headset on the nearer nurse, a corridor behind them.

For Directors of Clinical Services

How it runs

Run it the way your team already learns.

Workplace exchanges inside the VR Library.

Run it yourself Your facilitator runs PTR VR Library titles on standalone headsets.

Practice on a monitor, a laptop or a phone. An AI roleplay scenario for AI roleplay and practice.

In a browser Staff rehearse with an AI partner on a laptop, no headset.

A video call grid of people in their own rooms: a study, a kitchen, an office, a lounge, a home desk and a greenhouse.

Facilitated over video A PTR facilitator runs the debrief by video, wherever teams sit.

Facilitators hand over an XR practice session in a workshop room.

With your trainer A trainer you already know runs it, licensed and prepared by PTR.

PTR’s published work

What the published work includes, and does not

Conversation programs, each labelled by who measured it. Neither is a measured de-escalation or restraint outcome in a hospital.

Inside the Mater build: an older patient sits up in a hospital bed, a meal tray across the blanket, curtains drawn beside him. — Inside the Mater build, at a bedside.

Client evaluation: Mater Education

Mater Education ran its speaking-up program in VR across its regional and Brisbane campuses, with more than 60 participants. In Mater’s own program evaluation, over 96% of participants wanted more training in VR. Mater measured it. The pilot report and the case study.

Download the Mater case study PDF

A nurse leader wearing a headset stands in a ward corridor facing simulated colleagues, a colleague looking away. — A nurse leader speaks with a colleague.

Published research: Mayo Clinic

People Tech Revolution built a DEI module for nurse leaders at Mayo Clinic; Mayo’s researchers evaluated it in the Journal of Nursing Administration. It ran over 4 months, 593 of 1,131 learners returned the evaluation, and they rated the debriefing sessions as effective. Mayo measured it. The case study and the research summary.

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