The Impact of Virtual Reality Exposure on Stress Level and Sense of Competence in Ambulance Workers

Virtual reality (VR) exposure is one of the tools used in clinical psychology to treat anxiety dis-orders. It is also used to enhance the resilience of soldiers by confronting them with virtual combat environments. Increasing their resilience could strengthen them against the negative consequences of trauma exposure or the suffering experienced by people they rescued. Most studies focused on military and emergency medical staff but none has so far investigated ambu-lance workers’ experience (AW) while they are daily confronted with traumatic situations. The current study aims to assess the impact of a single VR exposure session on AW’ competence and stress. Forty participants were randomly assigned to either a VR immersion (experimental group, N = 20) or an audio immersion (control group, N = 20) of a shooting attack situation. The main hypotheses were that VR would lead to a decrease of anxiety, as measured by visual analogue scales, as well as an increase in the sense of competence compared to the control situa-tion. Results showed a significant reduction in the fear in both groups. Besides, results revealed an increase of the sense of competence after the VR immersion, and a reduction of the tension in the control group, even if these differences did not reach statistical significance’s level (p = 0.06). Although our hypotheses were only partially confirmed, since beneficial effects of either VR and the audio description on stress were observed, findings suggested that VR exposure could be a useful way to increase the resilience of the AW.