Healthcare conversations you get one attempt at
Bedside, triage desk and family room: the conversations clinical staff usually get one attempt at.
Somewhere to get it wrong first
PTR's healthcare work gives clinical and hospital staff somewhere to rehearse difficult conversations, bias awareness and speaking up.
Nothing in the room can be harmed, so staff practise the same scenario as many times as they need before they meet it on a shift.
That practice runs in hospitals in Australia and in the United States. Clinical teams at Mater Education and at Mayo Clinic each shaped what their own staff would rehearse.
The same duty, a different rulebook
In the United States it arrives as workplace violence prevention
An accredited hospital anywhere in the country carries a named training obligation, and several states go further and say how the training has to be delivered.
The accreditor names the content
The Joint Commission requires training at hire, annually, and whenever the program changes, and it names what the training covers: de-escalation, nonphysical intervention skills, physical intervention techniques and response to emergency incidents. Documentation is required.
That is the American counterpart of the actions above, in one citation rather than two. A state-by-state view sits alongside it, because the accreditor is rarely the only rule a hospital is meeting.
Two states wrote the method into law
California’s health care standard requires an opportunity to practise the techniques with the colleagues you work with, and a meeting to debrief the practice session. Nevada copied it and added a record of every session.
That is the same thing PTR builds, described by a legislature. Where you set it up that way, what comes out the other side is the register an assessor reads, which is the part a course alone never produces.
Want your team practising a real scenario like this?
Clinical education and mandatory training
The training program the assessor asks to see
An assessor wants to see a program that runs, and a list of who has been through it.
The corridor is the classroom
At handover two nurses stop between rooms, and one of them has to raise something the other would rather not hear. It is over quickly. Nobody books a lecture for it, and a whole shift can turn on the way it goes.
Inside the mandatory program you already run
NSQHS Action 1.20, set by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, asks a health service to run a mandatory training program and monitor who takes part. PTR builds the rehearsal inside that program, so the same scenario runs until it holds.
Action 5.34 (explained here) asks for de-escalation that protects patients, families and the workforce. The agitated relative, the triage counter and the corridor update above are that practice, rehearsed well before the shift that needs them.
The conversation nobody wants to lead
Each scenario below is a moment somebody has to lead, rehearsed first.
The family room and the corridor
Two more moments somebody has to lead, with the same few minutes to lead them in.
Posture and language, before the words
Two habits decide how a conversation lands: whether you speak to the person or over them, and whether you get down to their level. Both loops below are that decision, made in the room.
Work in this sector
Mater Education evaluated its pilot with the staff who took it, and reported strong engagement. The Mayo Clinic program sits behind two peer-reviewed papers with a six to eight month follow-up.
What the work looks like on a ward
A short film of PTR's healthcare training, in the rooms it is built for.
The Mater Education and Mayo Clinic programs below are that work in practice, with the evidence each of them published.
Mater Education
Speaking with Good Judgement
Feedback conversations, practised inside recreations of the real rooms they happen in.
A program moved into the headset
Mater Education, part of the Mater hospital group in Queensland, worked with PTR, Mater Foundation and Advance Queensland to bring its Speaking with Good Judgement program into VR.
Staff practise feedback conversations inside branched scenarios filmed in real Mater rooms. It was delivered face to face to more than 60 staff, and Mater's own evaluation reported these results.
"The evaluation showed great results, with a strong use case for VR to improve communication in health settings."
Leonie Sanderson
Co-founder, People Tech Revolution, on a VR program built into an Australian healthcare provider's existing training. Startup Spotlight, Aerospace Xelerated, 2023
enjoyed the experience
reported an increase in their concentration
found VR more engaging than face to face
wanted more VR-based learning
Figures as reported by Mater Education following its program evaluation.Mater Education, immersive learning pilot closure report, 2025
What the wider evidence says
Mater's figures come from its own pilot. A 2025 study of 36 novice nurses, published in Healthcare, found immersive VR speak-up training workable for building speaking-up and feedback skills.
Its authors call for larger replication.
Read the Mater Education case studySpeaking up for safety training
What a first engagement looks like
One cohort, then your own facilitators
How a hospital starts with PTR, in the order it happened at Mater.
How it started at Mater
A hospital rarely buys a training program outright. It funds a pilot, puts one cohort through it, and then asks the question that decides everything that follows: can we run this ourselves next year, without you in the room?
A funded pilot, a measured cohort, a handover
Mater's own pilot was co-funded, with a $40,000 Advance Queensland grant and $110,000 from Mater Education. The first cohort ran with PTR in the room, and Mater evaluated the results afterwards with the staff who took part.
Then Mater's own facilitators were trained to run the sessions, and the program has run on Mater’s own facilitators since. A funded pilot, then a measured cohort, then a handover: that is what a first engagement with PTR looks like.
Mayo Clinic
A Day In a Lifetime
A VR series for nurse and social worker leaders, and what it changed.
Empathy that was still there months later
At Mayo Clinic in the United States, nurse and social worker leaders took part in A Day In a Lifetime, a VR series People Tech Revolution co-designed with the Mayo Clinic team.
It was offered to 1,149 leaders, and two peer-reviewed papers found statistically significant gains in empathy and in willingness to act as an upstander, with most gains still present six to eight months later.
XRHealth Australia
Transport and recovery
Getting back behind the wheel at a pace the driver sets, with someone beside them.
The road comes back slowly
With XRHealth Australia, PTR builds immersive experiences that reintroduce the driving environment at a controlled pace.
Guided regulation and confidence-building scenarios support people recovering after critical incidents, and the return-to-work conversation is rehearsed in the room it will happen in.
What the people who ran it said
A clinical educator and a delivery partner, in their own words.
"PTR demonstrated a profound understanding of the intricacies of human behaviour."
Keia Hobbs, MD
University of Illinois Chicago
"Simon and his team have been exceptional collaborators: creative, responsive and genuinely committed to human-centred design. Their ability to understand clinical and operational needs and translate complex ideas into safe, realistic VR environments has made the partnership both productive and enjoyable. Together, we are developing practical, evidence-informed tools that build confidence, resilience and coping strategies through structured, real-world scenarios."
Martine McCash
Vice President, Services, XRHealth Australia
Questions people ask before the first cohort
Five come up in nearly every first conversation. Here they are, in the words they get asked in.
Does everyone need a headset?
No. The same conversation runs typed at the ward desk or spoken aloud in the bay, on screens the unit already owns. The headset is the deepest version of the practice, not the only way to get it.
How long does one session take?
Short enough to fit a real shift. One exchange works at the station between admissions, and another fits on the way back down the corridor. Nobody has to be released for a day.
Does this count towards our mandatory training program?
Action 1.20 asks a health service to implement a mandatory training program and to monitor the workforce's participation in it. This sits inside the program you already run, so the attendance column and the practice column come from the same place.
Who runs it once the first cohort is finished?
Your own educators. At Mater Education the facilitators were trained to run the program, and it has run on Mater’s own facilitators since.
What do we hold at the end that an executive will read?
Mater ran its own evaluation and reported the result under its own name, and that closure report is in the evidence list above. Ask for the same shape here: your questions, your participants, your report.
The minutes a shift gives you
Practice has to fit the ward, not the other way round. These are the two moments it fits into: sitting down at the station, and moving between one bay and the next.
Sitting down for two minutes
The station between admissions is long enough to work through one exchange. Nothing has to be booked and nothing has to be scheduled, because the clinician is already at the screen.
Or on the way back down the corridor
Spoken practice travels with the shift. The same exchange can be run out loud between bays, which is where most of a ward day is spent.
A few minutes, in whatever room you get
Wards, consulting rooms, doorsteps and staff rooms rarely give a clinician more than a few minutes. These scenarios put a practitioner in each of those rooms, with the clock the room really allows.
The quiet parts of a shift
A handover at the station and the minutes between patients are where a day gets processed, and where the habits practised above either hold or slip.
Care that carries on after the appointment
Where the work follows people home, and the drive between visits.
The consult room and the car
Where the work follows people home, and the minutes between visits that reset a clinician.
Through the headset in healthcare
The same moments from inside the scenario: a ward round, a triage bay, a medication room, a maternity check.
Standing where the patient stands
Three moments shot from the patient's side of the room.
The same conversation, without the headset
Ward time comes in the gaps. A written or spoken practice partner runs on the screen already at the desk, so a hard exchange can be rehearsed in the minutes that are free.
Typed, at the ward desk
Written practice lets a clinician try a sentence, read it back, and change one word before saying it to a patient or a family.
Spoken, in the bay
Speaking changes the exercise. Hearing your own phrasing is where most bedside conversations are decided, and that is the part a written run cannot rehearse.
Working in healthcare? Tell us which conversation your team needs to practise first.
Sources
Each figure above, with its authors and a link to the original.
A virtual reality intervention to increase interracial empathy and upstander behaviors in nursing leaders
Phelan, S. M., Burkhartzmeyer, H. L., Standen, E. C., Arcand, L. L., Kiker, K. M., Simiele, K. C., Proulx, A. L., Storsveen, A. S., Deng, Y., Foote, J. M., Kumbamu, A., Prakaashana, A. N., and Nelson, D. E.
Promoting Nursing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Through Virtual Reality Learning
Nelson, D. E., Burkhartzmeyer, H. L., Kiker, K. M., Simiele, K. C., Proulx, A. L., Arcand, L. L., Alcock, L. R., Frederick, R. K., Phelan, S., and Storsveen, A. S.
Mater Immersive Learning Pilot closure report
Mater Education's own closure report for Speaking with Good Judgement: Through the Looking Glass.
Effectiveness of an Immersive Virtual Reality Simulation Speak-Up Training Program for Patient Safety in Novice Nurses
The author list is not held by PTR. The DOI above resolves to the published paper.
Clinical Governance Standard, Action 1.20
The health service organisation implements a mandatory training program to meet its requirements under the standards, and monitors the workforce's participation in training.
Comprehensive Care Standard, Action 5.34
The health service organisation has processes to support collaboration with patients, carers and families to identify patients at risk of becoming aggressive or violent, implement de-escalation strategies, and safely manage aggression and minimise harm to patients, carers, families and the workforce.
