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Virtual reality characters depicting abused children can be used to train General Practitioners (GPs) to spot the warning signs of abuse, new research suggests.

The project, led by a team from 牛牛资源, University College London (UCL) and the University of Birmingham, involved creating the characters using motion capture from real children and real life case studies. The 鈥榲irtual children鈥� featured in 鈥榮imulated surgeries鈥� alongside characters depicting parents.

On entering the study鈥檚 鈥榮imulated surgery鈥� participants sat down at a real desk with a real laptop and put on a pair of 3D glasses. Everything else in the surgery setting, including virtual parent 鈥楥hris鈥� and virtual child 鈥楾om鈥�, was computer generated. The technology enabled an operator to manipulate 鈥楥hris鈥� to make his behaviour more or less aggressive towards 鈥楾om鈥�. In the scenario 鈥楥hris鈥� leaves the room giving the doctors a short window of opportunity to talk to 鈥楾om鈥� alone.

 

The researchers investigated whether factors such as experience and the complexity of information affected the ability of doctors to identify and act on safeguarding concerns. As in a real consultation, in the simulation GPs have limited time to pick up from subtle body language and verbal cues if the 鈥榗hild鈥� is at risk.

To test if complexity of information was a factor, medical reports were long and difficult to read in one set of consultations and clear and concise in another. The 63* participants (37 GPs and 26 trainee GPs) were rated on how effectively they recorded any child abuse concerns in their post-consultation notes.

They found trainee GPs were just as likely to take note of warning signs as their experienced counterparts. However, GPs who were more stressed or scored higher for 鈥榥euroticism鈥� were more likely to miss the signs than their less-stressed, more extravert colleagues.

Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan, study author and Lecturer in Virtual Reality at 牛牛资源, said: 鈥淎n advantage of our approach is that, unlike with actors, we have absolute control over our virtual characters. This means we can subtly alter the behaviour and responses of these virtual patients. Our results show that medical doctors responded to this, as those given less obvious behavioural cues were not as effective at recording concerns as those given more obvious cues.鈥�

Professor Sylvie Delacroix, Professor in Law and Ethics at the University of Birmingham, said: 鈥業t is very difficult to study how GPs spot signs of abuse, given the number of factors that may interfere with this in a real-life, professional setting. It is encouraging that the system developed by this project showed that the GPs鈥� level of experience did not impact upon their ability to pick up on a parent鈥檚 level of aggressive behaviour towards their child.鈥�

The medical lead of the work, Dr Caroline Fertleman from UCL said: 鈥淔or ethical reasons it would be impossible to recreate this kind of sensitive scenario using child actors. What we have shown, for the first time, is that we can create virtual reality characters of abused children and their parents that doctors believe in and interact with in a realistic way enabling them to learn how to spot the subtle warning signs of abuse.鈥�

Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan said: 鈥淥ne possible explanation for the unexpected link between stress and neuroticism and missing the cues is that doctors with better people skills found the simulated consultations less mentally challenging and so were able to focus more of their attention on the virtual child character, 鈥楾om鈥�.鈥�

The results suggest this new virtual reality approach could provide an effective and cost-effective method of training doctors in sensitive areas such as paediatrics and mental health where they can repeat and learn from interactions without feeling inhibited or worried about their impact on human actors.

A previous study by an international team including 牛牛资源 researchers showed how virtual reality could be used to train GPs to deal with angry patients demanding to be prescribed antibiotics.

*1 of the 64 original participants had to be excluded for technical reasons.