Immersive & Experiential Education Environment to Improve Student Nurse Wellbeing

Anxiety, stress, and cognitive overload are critical factors contributing to compromised health. These elementshave significantly impacted the nursing profession. This is a key a contemporary issue facing the nursing and
higher education community. Despite pastoral interventions provided across academia, students often still report feeling inadequately prepared for the for the challenges related to academic study and clinical placements. It was these recurrent reports of feeling under prepared that motivated the research team create the innovative Wellbeing in Student Education (WISE) room intervention. The content of this intervention was co-created with 119 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 56 staff and practice partners who participated in a range of focus groups and 1:1 interviews to help us create an intervention that directly addressed their academic and wellbeing needs.

Immersive rooms can be found in many hospitals and university-based simulation centres; however, this technology is not used to its full potential. As a multi-disciplinary team of academics and designers we created a multi-sensory immersive experience that uses human computer interaction to support students with their wellbeing and preparation for clinical practice. The best of our knowledge this is the first time this technology has been used for the purpose. We will present lessons learnt from the process of co-creating a wellbeing intervention.

We will also share data on satisfaction with the WISE room, and how this has been integrated. We will share how we have had an impact upon wellbeing and placement preparedness across our student cohorts. We believe there is possibility for other organisations to use immersive spaces from across the wider nursing / healthcare community to up scale intervention to meet the wellbeing needs of those in their organisations. This study was funded by NHS England following competitive peer reviewed process. Ethical approval given by Northumbria Universities Research Ethics Committee.