Mater Education: Speaking with Good Judgement
Mater's feedback and speaking-up program, rebuilt in VR so hospital staff rehearse the conversation inside the rooms they will have it in.
A culture program, moved into the headset
Mater Education, part of the Mater hospital group in Queensland, asked People Tech Revolution to bring its Speaking with Good Judgement program into virtual reality.
Speaking with Good Judgement is Mater's own program for giving feedback and speaking up respectfully, the behaviours at the centre of a psychologically safe hospital workplace.
The program that was losing its audience
Participation and engagement in the face-to-face delivery were waning. Mater wanted to know whether a more interactive, more emotionally resonant version could reverse that without losing the substance.
Feedback is easy to teach and hard to give
A workshop can explain what good feedback sounds like. It cannot put a colleague in front of you who has just looked away, with a corridor full of people and thirty seconds to decide.
Mater wanted staff to meet that moment before it counted, and to be able to meet it again.
Want a program like this for your own team?
What PTR built
Speaking with Good Judgement: Through the Looking Glass, a branched VR experience built with Mater Foundation and Advance Queensland, and co-designed with Mater Education, the program's team leads and the Centre for Medical Simulation at Harvard.
Familiar rooms, real consequences
The build put staff inside recreations of Mater's own hospital rooms and break areas. Guided by a narrator, they watched animated colleagues work through difficult feedback situations, made choices at each branch, and saw how each communication style played out.
"As organizations tighten budgets and adapt to remote workforces, VR offers scalability, efficiency, and deep behavioural impact. Beyond training technical skills, it enables leadership, resilience, de-escalation techniques, and inclusive decision-making, all essential for thriving in today's workplace."
Simon Lowe
CEO, People Tech Revolution. Forbes, 13 June 2025
Practice Mode: say it, hear it back, try again
After a scenario, staff record themselves responding, replay their own delivery and rate their confidence before going again. It happens in private, with nobody watching.
That is the part a workshop cannot offer twice: the same conversation, run as many times as it takes.
How it reached the wards
After the pilot, the experience was delivered face to face to more than 60 staff across Mater's Brisbane and regional campuses, and Mater's own facilitators were trained to run the technology themselves.
Run in-house, not by PTR
A facilitator workshop meant the program could continue inside Mater rather than depend on PTR for every session. Mater's Executive Team tested the experience themselves.
According to the Queensland XR Hub case study, the pilot ran on Pico Neo 3 headsets with approximately 100 participants across five Queensland locations.
What a director can promise upward
One cohort inside the mandatory program that already exists, an evaluation in the hospital’s own name, and educators who keep running it after the supplier has gone: what a director of clinical services can promise upward.
Backed by Advance Queensland
The Queensland Government's innovation program part-funded the pilot, and told the story in its own words.
What Mater measured
Mater Education evaluated the pilot with the staff who took it. These are its figures, from its own closure report.
said they enjoyed the experience
reported an increase in their concentration
found the VR training more engaging than face to face
wanted more VR-based learning in future programs
Figures as reported by Mater Education following its program evaluation.Mater Education, immersive learning pilot closure report, 2025
What changed on the wards
Facilitators reported that staff felt safer and more confident, both in the VR sessions and afterwards, when they used the skills at work.
Mater began folding VR into its live Speaking with Good Judgement delivery, and started looking at the same approach for PPE training and other high-value conversations.
What the people who ran it said
The program lead and the director who sponsored the work, in their own words.
"VR will be a game changer, helping us create ongoing opportunities for deliberate and safe practice following the live workshop experience."
Program Lead, Speaking with Good Judgement
Mater Education
"Working with the PTR team has been great and I look forward to continuing the relationship and developing more VR training."
Sean Hunter
Director of Systems Transformation, Mater and Mater Education
Want a program like this for your own team?
Sources
Each figure above, on the site of the organisation that published it.
Mater Immersive Learning Pilot closure report
Mater Education's own closure report for Speaking with Good Judgement: Through the Looking Glass, the source of the four evaluation figures.
Mater and People Tech Revolution VR Training Program: Case Study
The industry hub's account of the pilot: the headsets used, the participant count and the locations.
People Tech Revolution's virtual reality training package for Mater Hospital
The innovation story behind the grant and Mater's contribution, with the Queensland Government's video of the project.
