Hospital Tests Virtual Reality Games to Distract Young Burn Victims from Pain and Anxiety

There is nothing more painful than a burn injury. And having the dressing changed and the wounds cleaned and medicated can be excruciating, especially for the youngest patients. It is a normal practice to give children items like books and playing music to distract them but that is not really all that effective. Now the staff at Nationwide Children's Hospital has turned to high tech gadgets to solve the problem.

The nurses and doctors have turned to using virtual reality games. Depending on the degree of the burns, the follow up procedures can be mush worse than the pain from the injury. This produces anxiety. Once the patient has been thought it once, they know what to expect and the anxiety builds up and anxiety can cause more pain. Distracting a patient can greatly reduce the level of anxiety.

The hospital is using a special unit, which was made possible by a donation for the Aladdin Shriner's Hospital Association for Children. It transports the patient's mind into a computer generated world with its own environment, creatures and sounds. The patients wear virtual reality a helmet and once they are in their new world, they interact with the environment and the creatures, but they are not alone. There is a child life specialist helping them who is specially trained to help children through stressful treatments.

The hospital began using virtual reality in May of this year
and they have been receiving very positive feedback from the patients. And the nurses have reported that several of their patients have been able to improve their ability to tolerate the dressing changes.

The doctors are conducting a study to compare the results of distracting the pain using the virtual reality with the traditional one including watching television, listening to music, counting and deep breathing. They will randomly assign patients into different groups, each one getting a different distraction. After the procedure, they will ask them to rate their level of pain on a scale of 0 to10. They are going to look at how the parents and nurses perceive the child's level of pain also.

The goal of the burn program is to be able to get the child to become involved in a distraction activity with the hope that it will lead to needing less pain and anxiety medications. The doctors do point out that the level of pain is very personal and is different with each patient and the benefits from using virtual reality and the level of medications have to be determined on a case by case bases.

The author of the project is Catherine Butz, PhD, a psychologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital and an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Source: Nationwide Childrens Hospital http://www.nationwidechildrens.org/