Feb 19, 2026
In this episode of Perspectives on Health and
Tech, Oracle Health sits down with Dr. Petal S. Abdool,
Geriatric Psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Simulation Centre, to explore
how virtual reality is transforming the way clinicians are trained
to assess suicide risk and respond to opioid-related
emergencies.
Together, we discuss why immersive simulation is emerging as a
powerful tool in mental health education, how VR creates a safe
space for clinicians to practice complex and emotionally charged
conversations, and what early insights reveal about its impact on
learner confidence and preparedness. The conversation also looks
ahead to how technologies like VR, AI, and connected clinical
systems may shape the future of training the next generation of
mental health professionals.
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Episode Transcript:
00;00;13;09 - 00;00;30;03
Intro
Welcome to Perspectives on Health and Tech podcast. Brought to you
by Oracle Health. In this series, we have conversations on creating
a seamless and connected health care world where everyone thrives.
Let's get started.
00;00;30;06 - 00;01;00;16
Steve Herron
Hello everyone. I'm Steve Herron and I lead the continuum product
group at Oracle Health. That includes behavioral and mental health
rehabilitation, post-acute care, and social determinants of health.
And today, I'm especially excited to talk about innovation at the
intersection of mental health education, clinical readiness, and
emerging technology. Suicide risk assessment is one of the most
critical and most difficult skills clinicians must develop.
00;01;00;19 - 00;01;30;05
Steve Herron
These are high stakes conversations that demand empathy, clinical
judgment, and confidence, often formed under intense pressure. Yet
historically, clinicians have had limited opportunities to practice
these skills in a realistic but safe environment. That's where
innovation becomes essential. At Oracle Health, we're fortunate to
work with organizations that don't just adopt technology, but
thoughtfully reimagine how it can support clinicians and
patients.
00;01;30;08 - 00;02;00;13
Steve Herron
One of those organizations is the center for Addiction and Mental
Health, or CAMH in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. During a recent visit,
CAMH. I had the opportunity to tour their campus and spend time in
their Virtual Reality Learning center. What stood out immediately
was how VR is being used not as a novelty, but as a rigorous,
evidence-based training tool to prepare clinicians for some of the
most complex moments in mental health care.
00;02;00;15 - 00;02;29;19
Steve Herron
So today, we'll explore how CAMH is using virtual reality to train
clinicians in suicide risk assessment and opioid overdose
recognition. What they've learned so far, and what this means for
the future of clinical education. I'm delighted to be joined by
today's guest, Doctor Petal Abdool geriatric psychiatrist,
educator, faculty member at the University of Toronto and medical
director of the CAMH Simulation Center.
00;02;29;22 - 00;02;33;18
Steve Herron
Doctor Abdool, thank you so much for joining me.
00;02;33;20 - 00;02;44;21
Dr. Petal Abdool
Thank you so much, Steve, for this wonderful invitation. It's a
true pleasure to be here and to have the chance to highlight this
important work.
00;02;44;23 - 00;02;59;24
Steve Herron
To start us off. For listeners who may not be familiar with CAMH or
your role there, could you share a little bit about a CAMH’s
mission and your work at the simulation center? Particularly as it
relates to education and training in mental health?
00;02;59;26 - 00;03;45;01
Dr. Petal Abdool
Absolutely. As you said, CAMH, which is Canada's largest mental
health teaching hospital, fully affiliated with the University of
Toronto. And our mission is to transform the way we understand and
treat mental illness to care; excellent care, research, education,
and system advocacy. Our strategic mission is to get upstream
advance care and to lift societal health. And at the simulation
center, we see our role is to turn that mission into a concrete
learning experience that can prepare clinicians for the realities
of mental health and addiction care not just for today, but for
tomorrow.
00;03;45;03 - 00;04;10;21
Dr. Petal Abdool
In my role as a geriatric psychiatrist, an educator, and the
inaugural medical director of the CAMH Simulation Center, I should
also add that I'm the faculty lead for simulation at the University
of Toronto. So, this gives me a wonderful position to oversee
programs that use these modalities. And in the past, we've worked
with standardized patients, team-based simulations.
00;04;10;23 - 00;04;40;11
Dr. Petal Abdool
And now we've opened the door to technology enabled simulation like
virtual reality. And this is in order to help our learners to
practice high stakes communication, clinical reasoning and to
afford collaborative care. A key focus that we have is to give our
clinicians a safe space to rehearse difficult conversations, like
the ones you mentioned around suicidal ideation, substance use,
trauma, stigma.
00;04;40;13 - 00;05;03;24
Dr. Petal Abdool
And we want to do this a bit before and alongside real clinical
encounters with patients and families in terms of the gaps, we see
a disconnect between what clinicians know on paper and how
confident they feel when they're in the room with patients, and
especially as it pertains to mental health and addictions. With the
advent of the pandemic.
00;05;03;29 - 00;05;27;06
Dr. Petal Abdool
There were there was a decrease in the number of clinical
encounters that many of our trainees had. And that was a gap that
allowed us, to acquire funding to build a virtual reality suicide
risk assessment training that you were referring to, as well as an
opioid overdose management training. So, here we see the
opportunity that afforded us.
00;05;27;09 - 00;05;57;10
Dr. Petal Abdool
Learners are able to address that worry they have about seeing the
wrong thing, or missing subtle cues or escalating distress in the
patient. And because of the pandemic, back then, they only had a
handful of supervised opportunities to manage these situations in
their training. And so simulation actually became so crucial and
powerful back then. It allowed us to design these opportunities for
repeated structured practice that allowed for what we call mastery
learning.
00;05;57;12 - 00;06;12;09
Dr. Petal Abdool
And they get the feedback so that by the time they get to the
bedside, they're not having their very first high stakes
conversation in a real with a real person in crisis.
00;06;12;11 - 00;06;38;05
Steve Herron
Thank you. You know, one of the most compelling things that I saw
during my visit was the intentional choice to use virtual reality.
Not just simulation. More broadly, but immersive VR specifically.
What led CAMH to explore VA VR as a training modality and what
challenges or limitations in traditional training were you hoping
it could help address, especially when it comes to suicide risk
assessment?
00;06;38;07 - 00;07;03;01
Dr. Petal Abdool
So the move to virtual reality really grew out of two observations.
I mentioned that the pandemic had limited the ability for trainees
to be in the clinical setting. Many of them had had to pivot to a
virtual, platform in order to learn. And so that really allowed us
to think, hey, how can we innovate here? How can we increase the
authenticity of the virtual platform?
00;07;03;04 - 00;07;30;00
Dr. Petal Abdool
And then the other thing is that suicide risk assessment is such a
core competency for many clinicians. Yet the opportunities to
practice are limited and variable and dependent on, you know,
chance to a great extent. We see that the traditional methods that
we're using, like lectures, checklists, even roll, please don't
always capture that emotional weight and that complexity that you
get when you have a real conversation.
00;07;30;03 - 00;07;45;12
Dr. Petal Abdool
And so that's where we felt that the opportunity to explore and
study the effectiveness of virtual reality with something, CAMH as
a leading institution in mental health needed to embrace and
explore.
00;07;45;15 - 00;08;07;27
Steve Herron
That's exciting. And I'll tell you that being there and
experiencing it firsthand, it actually did. You know, I was
surprised at how much it impacted me emotionally, being in that
virtual reality. And even though I was an observer in the room, I
wasn't actually the one with the goggles on. But it still made my
heart rate come up.
00;08;07;29 - 00;08;27;07
Steve Herron
You know, as I observed what was happening in the room and the the
situation as it was occurring. I am curious what other happens with
other clinicians. So for clinicians who may feel skeptical about VR
going into it, what tends to change once they experience that kind
of immersive learning firsthand?
00;08;27;09 - 00;08;45;10
Dr. Petal Abdool
Well, I'm really I'm happy to hear how moved you were by the
experience. I will say that, we always do a brief with our
learners, and we say, if you want to get the most out of this
experience, you've got to suspend your disbelief and allow yourself
to become immersed. And that's where the true learning can
happen.
00;08;45;12 - 00;09;07;03
Dr. Petal Abdool
I have some funny stories where we we had trainees in and we built
two experiences, two avatars, and you had to interview the avatars.
And of course, as someone who is in the user testing phase of that
virtual reality, my goal was to try to break it. So I'm in there
doing all the wrong things to see how it would evolve.
00;09;07;05 - 00;09;30;25
Dr. Petal Abdool
And I jumped in and I didn't try to build rapport with the avatar,
with the patient. And I just asked, you know, questions. And he
moved his body in a very irritated manner. And I jumped because
even though it was an avatar, like you said, it does still trigger
that emotional response. And on one occasion we were training some
pharmacy students and the time was up.
00;09;30;25 - 00;09;54;13
Dr. Petal Abdool
We gave them a set amount of time to experiment and to play, and
one of the students came up to me and she said, is she going to be
okay in there? And I said, yeah, don't worry about it. We've got
it. We've got it under control. And so for me, it was so gratifying
to have that question asked because I realized that she had truly
invested and engaged with the with the experience.
00;09;54;13 - 00;10;03;26
Dr. Petal Abdool
And so I do believe that is laying the groundwork for a really
authentic and, evolutionary experience.
00;10;03;28 - 00;10;28;22
Steve Herron
Yeah, I know it definitely had that impact on me. Question for you,
two of the programs that really stood out to me, were the ones that
focused on suicide risk assessment, and then opioid overdose
recognition. Both are very emotionally complex, time sensitive
situations. Can you walk us through what the VR experience actually
looks like for a learner?
00;10;28;24 - 00;10;38;18
Steve Herron
And how do avatar based patient interactions, guided feedback, and
decision making moments come together to build a clinical
skill?
00;10;38;20 - 00;11;02;26
Dr. Petal Abdool
That's a great question. So we built two different trainings. One
is a suicide risk assessment that it was geared towards clinicians.
So frontline clinicians who want to acquire that comfort and
expertise with asking difficult and sensitive questions. And so the
two training scenarios that we built were two very different
patients. One was a male, one was a female.
00;11;02;28 - 00;11;27;03
Dr. Petal Abdool
They had different levels of risk, and one had, a comorbid
substance use. And what we wanted to do was try to mirror the
complexity of our everyday interactions with patients and sort of
that holistic approach to asking not just about what their thoughts
were like, but about their lifestyle, their stressors, and their
supports in the community.
00;11;27;05 - 00;11;52;05
Dr. Petal Abdool
So in the training, it's a typical the learner enters a virtual
clinical space and they interact with a preceptor, a nurse educator
who introduces herself and explains that she was running a group
and she was worried about one of the patients. And then she gives
them a clipboard with, you know, demographic information and then
invites the learner to go in and have a conversation with the
avatar, with the patient.
00;11;52;08 - 00;12;22;22
Dr. Petal Abdool
And then, once they've explored the learner is guided throughout
the experience by selecting drop down a questions from a drop down
box. And these these questions and the responses that they receive
are aligned with evidence based assessment domains. Things like
exploring suicidal thoughts, intention plan, access to means, past
history, whether there's substance use, what are the protective
factors that that patient may have, might have.
00;12;22;24 - 00;12;46;27
Dr. Petal Abdool
And another objective of the training is to help the learner learn
to convey empathy and validation and to build rapport, which is so
crucial for people to open up and reveal their innermost thoughts.
So, the patient will respond not just with words, but in terms of
their tone, their body language, and the emotional cues change
depending on how the learner engages with them.
00;12;47;00 - 00;13;10;14
Dr. Petal Abdool
Once they're done that training, they come back out. They meet with
the preceptor avatar, who then acts as though they're a virtual
supervisor, prompting the learner to make sure they didn't miss any
key risks or domains, and then gently challenging them to move on.
And so that's really, a beautiful opportunity for the learner to
pause, reflect, and then continue.
00;13;10;17 - 00;13;37;23
Dr. Petal Abdool
And at the end they get a summary with regard to the risk of the
patient. The other thing is that we built the virtual reality with
the understanding that maybe not every learner wants to put on a
headset and engage in such an immersive environment. And so we also
have a complimentary desktop training that anyone can access and go
through the same content, and hopefully get the same learning
experience.
00;13;37;26 - 00;13;54;11
Steve Herron
Can you talk about that a little bit? How does the VR headset based
simulation compare with those other, asynchronous or more flexible
delivery models in terms of, you know, access to it, but also then
learning impact?
00;13;54;14 - 00;14;22;03
Dr. Petal Abdool
So we did study, the virtual reality experience, and compared it to
just the desktop experience. What we found were, you know, pretty
interesting in that the learning outcomes were very comparable
between both trainings. But learners found the VR to be more
engaging, more immersive, more appealing, especially for the
younger folks who grew up, you know, in that, digital world.
00;14;22;06 - 00;14;50;12
Dr. Petal Abdool
However, there were also and this aligns with the what we see in
the published literature, there were about 10 to 30% of
participants who might have had mild to moderate what we call cyber
sickness symptoms, you know, feeling a little bit nauseous or just
not wanting to be in that environment. And so that's why we were
very grateful that we had the opportunity to offer people, the
option to not don the headset and to to sit with a desktop
instead.
00;14;50;14 - 00;15;19;15
Dr. Petal Abdool
I would say the learning outcomes were comparable in terms of
confidence, and the learning objectives that we, we designed the
training to achieve were completed equally effectively in both. I
think the advantage of the virtual we out of the desktop is that we
can disseminated more widely right here in Canada, we have a lot of
different people in the North who may not have access to
conferences or training opportunities.
00;15;19;19 - 00;15;39;00
Dr. Petal Abdool
So we can share links to the desktop, and they can do this
training. The virtual reality you would have to order headset we'd
have to share that content with you, or you'd need to come to the
sim center physically to engage with it. And so I think that, there
are advantages and disadvantages to both.
00;15;39;02 - 00;16;07;09
Steve Herron
Yeah, that's amazing that it's got that ability to be able to be
pushed out to literally anybody who's got access to a desktop, to
be able to receive the same training. So that's great. As demand
for mental health services grows. Access to high quality training
becomes just as important as the access to care. What lessons has
CAMH learned about scaling simulation based education?
00;16;07;12 - 00;16;16;20
Steve Herron
And how do you see technologies like VR and potentially AI and
connected clinical systems shaping the future of clinician
training?
00;16;16;22 - 00;16;49;24
Dr. Petal Abdool
Well, you're absolutely right that access to training is a critical
equity issue, especially as it pertains to mental health care. At
camp, one of our priorities has really been to design simulation
programs that can reach learners beyond our own walls. We've
recently launched what we call the CAMH Global Learning Academy,
which means that we've created a learning platform system that can
allow us to really, offer programing and training across not just
Ontario, across disciplines and across other stages of
training.
00;16;50;01 - 00;17;32;07
Dr. Petal Abdool
And hopefully that that could mean that we would have a global
impact and global reach. Some of the key lessons I think that we
learned is that a technology has to follow pedagogy. Like we want
to start with clear competencies. We want to make sure that, what
we actually want clinicians to do in practice, translates to what
we are using the virtual reality or the technology enabled
simulation for meaning it's not just a desire to be cool or
innovative, but it's also to fill a gap and to do so in a way that,
supersedes or equates to what we were doing before.
00;17;32;09 - 00;18;01;28
Dr. Petal Abdool
Secondly, I think usability matters enormously. If if hardware is
hard to access, or if the support is limited, even the best design
simulation will just sit on the shelf. I think we had to think
carefully about, workflow, onboarding, making sure we had the
technical support, especially for busy clinicians, to make sure
that anything that we designed and developed would actually become
useful and sustainable.
00;18;02;00 - 00;18;29;02
Dr. Petal Abdool
I think the other lessons that we learned is that collaborating is
essential. We collaborated with other academic institutions, health
systems. We had a huge team of content experts, lived experience
advisers, and that allowed us to really build something that could
be scaled and that could be applicable across many domains. And it
also opened us up to opportunity to study the impact and to
continuously improve it.
00;18;29;04 - 00;18;49;19
Steve Herron
That's great. In summary here, before we wrap up, I do want to ask
you for two quick takeaways. One insight you'd want clinicians to
remember about suicide risk assessment training. And also one
takeaway for healthcare leaders that are thinking about innovation
in education.
00;18;49;21 - 00;19;16;23
Dr. Petal Abdool
The one insight that relates to suicide risk assessment training
is, I think that a skillful suicide risk assessment is not just a
checklist, it's a conversation, one that creates a sense of safety
validation and a pathway to support. And the more that we allow our
clinicians to practice these conversations in a safe environment,
the more present and effective we can be, especially when we are
with someone who is struggling.
00;19;16;26 - 00;19;46;04
Dr. Petal Abdool
I think that with regard to your second question, I think
innovation and education isn't optional. I think technology enabled
simulation, is key. If we want to prepare our workforce for the
complexity of mental health and for the future ahead of us. I think
that things like VR, artificial intelligence, chat bots, all these
things that are on the horizon and that are getting better and
better with each passing month.
00;19;46;07 - 00;20;01;15
Dr. Petal Abdool
I think these are powerful enablers of more equitable, scalable and
high quality training, especially when it comes to high stakes
things like suicide, risk assessment and opioid overdose
management.
00;20;01;17 - 00;20;13;03
Steve Herron
Perfect. Assuming someone wants to learn more about this, Doctor
Abdool, where can listeners go to learn more about CAMH’s virtual
reality training programs?
00;20;13;05 - 00;20;34;22
Dr. Petal Abdool
So I'm happy to say that you can just go online and Google camh.ca.
You can access our Global Learning Academy if you want to try out
any of our trainings. And our opioid overdose. I didn't speak about
it too much, but it's not just designed for clinicians. We also
have a training for patients, families and caregivers.
00;20;35;00 - 00;20;44;17
Dr. Petal Abdool
So there is opportunity to upskill yourself. If you think this is
an important, area for you to learn about.
00;20;44;19 - 00;21;21;02
Steve Herron
Well, Doctor Abdool, thank you again for sharing your insights and
for the important work you and your colleagues are doing at CAMH.
Seeing this program in action reinforced for me how powerful
technology can be when it's grounded in clinical excellence,
evidence and compassion at Oracle Health. Our role is to support
organizations like CAMH with modern, connected digital systems that
enable high quality mental health care, education and research
partnerships like this, where innovation extends beyond the EHR and
into how clinicians are trained, are what truly move the field
forward.
00;21;21;05 - 00;21;47;12
Steve Herron
For our listeners who may want to learn more about CAMH makers
virtual reality programs, including suicide risk assessment
training. We encourage you to explore other resources at camh.ca.
And as always, if you or someone you love is in a mental health
crisis, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 over
seven in the U.S. and in Canada.
00;21;47;14 - 00;22;16;26
Outro
That's all for this episode of Perspectives on Health and Tech
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