THE South Western Ambulance Service is using virtual reality in training. 

The "immersive training experience" tests how its incident commanders react to different emergency scenarios. 

"Types of incidents could include multi-vehicle road traffic collisions, flooding, and terrorist attacks," a spokesperson said. 

"Commanders use information, intelligence, risk assessments, plans, and procedures to assess an incident, to enable them and the wider trust to develop the strategy and tactics for dealing with it." 

Staff wear VR headsets and use a joystick. They see a 3D moving image and hear realistic sound effects and voices. 

“It provides an immersive, safe, and controllable learning environment which was very engaging and so realistic," a commander who did the training said. 

The South Western Ambulance Service is the first ambulance trust in the country to use VR in training incident commanders. 

It wants to use the technology to train other staff, such as those who answer 999 calls in emergency operations centres.