Hässleholms Municipality
Introduction
Hässleholm Municipality has integrated ViroteaED into staff training in elderly care, disability care, social psychiatry and healthcare. The administration has approximately 1,700 employees and supports around 3,000 users through special housing, home care, group and service housing and daily activities. Johanna Rosén, from the care administration, talks about how they work to strengthen skills development, and why ViroteaED became part of the answer.
Challenge
Hässleholm faced a complex challenge: how do you train a large and mobile workforce in a profession that requires both the right skills and the ability to meet users with empathy and understanding? The aging population is growing while the number of professionals is decreasing. The need to quickly introduce holiday substitutes – and to continuously train regular staff – was evident. A key question was how staff could gain a deeper understanding of users’ perspectives, and how sensitive topics such as loneliness and hallucinations could be raised in an educational and engaging way.
Solution
Johanna came into contact with ViroteaED when she was teaching at Komvux and took the idea with her when she started working in the care administration. Today, Hässleholm has nine sets of ViroteaED that are used in all operations. The training has been integrated as a fixed feature in the introduction day for holiday substitutes – an opportunity where staff take on the user's perspective through VR scenarios and then discuss what they experienced.
Results
Around 180 people have completed the training, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Only one person expressed initial hesitation – and changed their mind immediately after trying it. The loneliness scenario has made a strong impression on many, as has the hallucination scenario and how staff can act in such situations.
- "I gained a better understanding of the vulnerable and it became much more fun to learn this way."
- "I've always known that we have a great responsibility, but today I really realized what it's like for the patients and what responsibility we really have."
Johanna summarizes it this way: ViroteaED creates an understanding of how important you are as a healthcare professional, and does so in a way that traditional education cannot.