The Moment Nurture Felt Real: Lessons From INACSL 2026 on Dementia Care Training

I have been to conferences before. This one felt different.

For the first time, I was standing behind a booth at a major healthcare simulation conference with something we built at Lived Experiences, watching people decide in real time whether it mattered.

Our First Time Exhibiting Nurture at INACSL 2026

At INACSL 2026, Lived Experiences showcased Nurture, a VR dementia care training platform designed for nursing education, caregiver training, and healthcare simulation programs. Here are the key lessons we learned from educators, simulation leaders, and healthcare professionals who experienced the platform firsthand.

We had landed a spot a little later than most exhibitors, so our location was not ideal. I knew people would have to find us.

And somehow, they did.

“One nursing educator came quickly toward me and said they had heard about us from someone at the conference and really wanted to try it.”

That may sound like a small thing, but for a start-up at its first nursing conference booth, it meant a lot. It told me that the idea behind Lived Experiences was starting to reach people.

Why the Dementia Paranoia Scenario Resonated With Nursing Educators

We demoed one of the chapters from Nurture called Paranoia. Like the other chapters in Nurture, the person wearing the headset experiences the world through the patient’s first-person perspective.

In the Paranoia chapter, the patient believes a caregiver is trying to hurt them with a knife. But in reality, the caregiver is only trying to hand them a piece of mail that was delivered.

That gap between what is actually happening and what the patient believes is happening is the heart of the experience.

It is one thing to say, “A person living with dementia may become fearful, confused, or defensive.” It is very different to feel, even briefly, what it might be like when the world around you suddenly stops making sense.

Experiencing Dementia From the Patient’s Perspective

One attendee removed the headset and was clearly processing what they had experienced from the patient’s perspective. They had pushed the caregiver away inside the simulation. When they realized what had happened, they kept apologizing.

They were not treating it like a game. They were trying to understand why they reacted that way.

That moment stayed with me.

Sometimes, from the outside, a patient’s behavior may look aggressive, irrational, or difficult. But from inside that person’s experience, the reaction may feel like fear. It may feel like self-protection. It may feel like the only response available in that moment.

That is the perspective we want learners to sit with, and it is hard to fully understand from a lecture alone.

Why Debriefing Is Essential in Dementia Care Training

Nurture is not meant to replace educators, clinical judgment, or human debriefing. It is meant to give instructors and learners a shared experience to talk about. Something they can come back to and ask:

• Why did I react that way?
• What did I miss?
• What could a caregiver have done differently?
• How can I communicate in a way that reduces fear instead of increasing it?

This is also why the debrief is such an important part of Nurture. The VR scenario creates the emotional and cognitive experience, but the learning continues afterward.

After the VR experience, the user goes through an in-headset debrief that helps them understand what they experienced from the patient’s perspective. It also connects that experience to the caregiver’s role by walking through practical do’s and don’ts.

Extending Learning Through AI-Powered Reflection

After the debrief, users experience an AI-powered question-and-answer section, where they can ask questions by speaking in VR. This is one of the parts I am most excited about because learning should not stop when the scenario ends.

A learner may want to ask, “Why did the patient think the caregiver had a knife?” or “What should I do if a patient thinks I am trying to harm them?” or “How do I approach someone who is already afraid?”

These are the kinds of questions and answers that turn a powerful simulation into practical caregiving insight and make the training more useful.

What Nursing Educators and Simulation Leaders Saw in Nurture

What encouraged me most at INACSL was that educators immediately understood this. Many people who tried Nurture or watched the demo did not just say, “This is interesting technology.” They talked about where it could fit: nursing education, simulation labs, caregiver training, clinical education, research, and eventually other conditions and lived experiences beyond dementia.

That was important to hear.

At Lived Experiences, our goal is bigger than building a VR product. We are trying to build a new way for people to understand what others go through. Nurture is our first major step in that direction, focused on dementia and Alzheimer’s-related caregiving experiences.

Key Takeaways From INACSL 2026

INACSL gave us a chance to test that mission in front of the people who think about healthcare simulation every day. It also reminded me how much care goes into this field.

The educators I met were thoughtful. They asked good questions. They cared about student learning, emotional safety, implementation, debriefing, and whether this could actually work inside a real curriculum.

That is exactly the audience we hoped to meet.

For Lived Experiences, this was a beginning. We left INACSL with more than booth conversations. We left with follow-up meetings, interest from educators who want to explore implementing Nurture in their programs, and research conversations around how immersive experiences can support empathy, reflection, and practical dementia-care training.

Most of all, I left thinking about that attendee who took off the headset and kept saying sorry.

That reaction captured something I have believed for a long time: when people are given a chance to experience a situation from another perspective, even briefly, they often come away seeing it differently.

And in healthcare education, that kind of understanding matters.

Beyond VR: Building Better Dementia Caregivers

This is not about putting on a headset for the sake of using new technology. It is about helping learners understand the person behind the behavior and experience the situation from their point of view.

It is about helping caregivers see fear, confusion, or distress where they may have previously seen aggression. It is about giving educators a new way to start deeper conversations with students.

In a field where caregiver burnout and turnover are real challenges, better preparation and deeper understanding matter. If training can help caregivers feel more equipped to handle difficult moments, it can also support better care for people living with dementia and other complex conditions.