In one scene, a black male nurse named Tunde is told by his manager that personal protective equipment (PPE) was being locked away at night to prevent theft during night shifts during the pandemic, when ethnic minorities were more likely to work those hours.
In another case, an Asian doctor named Jasmine is fired by a human resources manager after raising a double standard regarding requests for shift changes during the pandemic for childcare, something her white colleagues were granted..
These are some of the discrimination scenarios depicted in a new form of training for NHS staff that has been designed to create a better understanding of the experiences of colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds.
The training, called “Walking in someone else’s shoes,” involves participants wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset and watching videos depicting instances of racism and discrimination by actors within an NHS setting.
The clips are based on transcripts of 133 interviews with NHS staff describing their own experiences of racism while working, collected during the Study of tidesa project by academics at King’s College London investigating how instances of discrimination within the NHS relate to existing health inequalities.
The training was developed after warnings that the NHS is facing a mass exodus of black, Asian and minority ethnic doctors due to “persistent” and “intolerable” levels of racism in the workplace, while research shows white nurses are twice as likely as their black and Asian colleagues to be promoted.
Professor Stephani Hatch, professor of sociology and epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, said the VR training being trialled was an “incredibly creative” way of delivering immersive training to help staff across the NHS better understand the experiences.
“Virtual reality allows the user to experience discrimination in some cases, but also to be able to witness instances of discrimination as well… and virtual reality gave us the opportunity to use creative methodologies.”
So far, the training has been completed by 270 staff from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
The academics behind the project believe it should be rolled out across the health system, with Hatch saying: “It’s really important to us that this training gets to managers and leaders. I’d love to see a room full of middle managers doing the training because they can often be the gatekeepers.”
Dr Rebecca Rhead, professor of society and mental health at King’s, said that when creating the VR videos it was important to speak directly to frontline NHS staff to understand their experiences.
“Our research has allowed us to understand the impact that their experiences in the workplace have had on their mental health and their ability to provide care and continue working in the NHS,” Rhead said. “That’s partly why VR in this form is so powerful – because it alleviates the burden of reliving trauma and saves them the gruelling emotional work of having to tell people about their sometimes heartbreaking experiences.”
Helen Walsh, a media and VR producer at Maudsley Learning who helped develop and implement the training, said the new training had helped “tackle some of the underlying issues that aren’t often talked about, giving people a voice and making sure that voice is heard by others too”.
She added that the training could also directly address the discomfort felt by bystanders when faced with racist situations. She said: “I hope the training we will be delivering will help to address some of the inequalities that exist in workplaces like the NHS. The video training showed that many people were bystanders in situations like these, and in these training scenarios, you are actually forced to be a bystander because you can’t participate.”
NHS England has been contacted for comment.