The project "Police VR" (P-VR) aims to strengthen the skills of police officers to manage situations where they have to convey a serious message to someone – training them to do it effectively and sensitively to protect the health of all involved. Police officers are faced with many psychologically and communicatively demanding situations on a daily basis, including, for example, communication with injured persons or unaware bereaved persons after fatal accidents. These situations induce strong psychological reactions and require social skills and experience. According to scientific studies, police officers often manifest a lack of social empathy when performing their work, which is associated with insufficient formal training in the field of social sciences and psychology.
With the help of specialists from various fields, we developed an application in virtual reality (VR) aimed at strengthening the communication skills of the police officers when conveying serious messages. The training takes place in such a way that the student (police officer) is provided with VR headset, in which he is projected an environment with a virtual character, possessing a range of emotional, verbal and non-verbal reactions. The student's task is to convey a serious message (e.g., the death of a son in a car accident), while their progress is observed and evaluated by an experienced lecturer who controls the VR software. This methodical tool is intended primarily for lecturers and students of police training, but also for the training of other members of security forces who convey serious bad messages during the performance of their work. The P-VR application can be used once or repeatedly. One-time use can be, for example, aimed at exposure during classroom training; and repeated use is for users who need to learn communication techniques better than can be accomplished by one-time training.
The project was launched with the financial support from the ETA programme of the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR), project No. TL03000050. The ETA programme is the Programme for Applied Research, Experimental Development and Innovation in Social Sciences and Humanities. The solution period is 08/2020–12/2023, the main recipient is the National Institute of Mental Health CZ (NIMH CZ), and the co-recipients are Leiden University and 3dsense s.r.o.
