Care Home Workers’ Views on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Hand Hygiene Training
New research on exploring Care Home Workers’ Views on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Hand Hygiene Training has been published in Health & Social Care in the Community.
Led by Norina Gasteiger, as part of her National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester (ARC-GM) funded PhD study at The University of Manchester, this qualitative realist study interviewed 25 care home staff from 6 different care homes, to look at how, and in what contexts care home workers think augmented reality and virtual reality training delivered via smartphone apps might work in promoting hand hygiene practice. The team were also interested in exploring how the training could be implemented and maintained in the future.
The study found that care home staff:
- All agreed that novice carers would especially benefit from augmented reality or virtual reality hand hygiene training.
- Believed that feedback and reminding, repeated practice, and interactive learning could be triggered by augmented reality and virtual reality training.
- Expected that the training could help to improve their hand hygiene technique and awareness about how infections spread.
- Emphasised that hand hygiene interventions may not work for everyone equally and are context-dependent.
Care home staff also highlighted differences between care homes and learners, regarding policies on further training/development, preferences, and comfort with technology.
Norina Gasteiger, lead author, comments:
“This work highlights an opportunity for using augmented and virtual reality technologies for hand hygiene training in care homes.
Carers and managers gave us important insights on how the training could be implemented and what it is about the technologies that might make them effective as training tools. In the next step of the project, we will work closely with care home managers to decide which technology best suits their care home and to test the feasibility of the training.”
The full paper in Health & Social Care in the Community, is open access and freely available: