Exploring sex differences in immersive safety training for home-based care among informal caregivers: a randomized comparative study

BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers are key to home‐based care safety. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the effectiveness of immersive training aimed at reducing home‐based care errors differs according to caregiver sex. METHODS: A randomized comparative study with pre‐post assessment involving 141 informal caregivers compared virtual reality (VR; n=70) and 360° video training (360VT; n=71). Data were collected at baseline and three months after the intervention. The primary outcome was the number of self‐reported home‐based care errors. Data were analysed using a mixed‐effects Poisson regression model. RESULTS: The mean number of self‐reported errors decreased from 0.91 to 0.46 per caregiver after training. Exploratory subgroup analyses suggested that pre‐post changes may have differed according to training modality and caregiver sex, with larger estimated reductions among women in the VR group (IRR=0.29, 95%CI: 0.14‐0.59; p=0.0005) and among men in the 360VT group (IRR=0.19, 95%CI: 0.06‐0.60; p=0.0048). The phase×modality×sex interaction was statistically significant (IRR=13.88, 95%CI: 1.95‐98.75; p=0.0087). Satisfaction was high overall, although women in the VR group reported lower ease of participation (adjusted p=0.0373). CONCLUSIONS: Immersive training may contribute to improving home‐based care safety among informal caregivers. These findings also highlight the importance of appropriate onboarding, usability adaptations, and further evaluation in larger and more diverse caregiver populations.