A clinical scenario for practising conversation.

Our Work / For innovation teams

Evidence your clinical and safety owners can check

Q: Custom build or ready-made?

Both exist. Ready-made titles run from the PTR VR Library ; custom scenarios are built from your own situations. See how provider types compare .

Practise the conversations where the response matters, with results published by the organisations that ran them.

The situation

You have found something worth piloting. Now it needs sign-off

An innovation lead sees staff rehearse a hard conversation in a headset or with an AI character. Before a pilot, the clinical governance lead, the safety manager and the educator each ask the same question: what does the evidence say, and who measured it?

A director waits in a plain meeting room. A first person VR training scenario for government and public sector, seen through the headset. — A director waits in a meeting room.

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

A permits officer reviews a screen with colleagues. A VR training scenario for mining and resources. — Colleagues review a screen together.

The conversations

Four conversations where the response matters

Each one can affect safety, dignity, care or someone’s job. These are the moments staff rehearse.

A nurse leader wearing a headset stands in a ward corridor facing two simulated colleagues, one of whom has looked away. — A nurse leader faces two colleagues.

Speaking up and bias

Challenging an unsafe decision by someone senior. Recognising exclusion, and responding to it.

De-escalation and difficult conversations

Responding to someone who is becoming angry. Addressing performance, a complaint or harm, with a family or a colleague.

The evidence

Three results, each labelled by who measured it

Two are peer-reviewed papers. One is a client’s own program evaluation. Forward them as they are.

An office desk scenario in the Google DEI training, an overheard conversation involving tokenism. — An office desk scenario from the Google training.

Peer reviewed: Google, ACM CHI 2024

In the published paper, the 7 trainees who returned the optional survey gave 82% average agreement that the VR training was better than Google’s standard DEI training, and 94% average satisfaction. The scenarios were co-designed with Google’s DEI team. Read the case study.

A clinician wearing a headset stands at a hospital bedside facing a simulated patient propped up on pillows, practising the bedside conversation in a ward that looks like the ward. — A clinician at a hospital bedside.

Peer reviewed: Mayo Clinic, a controlled trial

Of 1,149 eligible nursing leaders, those who trained in the VR program People Tech Revolution built gained in empathic feeling against a control group (p = .002). Read both Mayo Clinic papers.

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 hospital bedside.

Client evaluation: Mater Education

In Mater’s own program evaluation, 90% of participants reported better concentration, 77% found the scenarios more engaging than face-to-face delivery, and over 96% wanted more training in VR. Read the case study.

Download the Google research paper PDF Download the Mater case study PDF

A caseworker wearing a headset sits at a desk across from a simulated distressed client holding his head. — A caseworker sits across from a distressed client.

De-escalation: research, not our results

PTR has no published de-escalation result of its own yet. The published studies report confidence and simulated-skill gains, each with design limits worth reading before a pilot.

Sign-off