A Finnish medical center for children and the young piloted using virtual reality to ease fear and pain with several families with kids in winter 2017. In this pilot project the children were given an opportunity to dive in to an under water adventure assisted by virtual reality glasses during blood tests and vaccinations.
There’s evidence from clinical studies that virtual reality technology can be used to reduce pain and distress during medical procedures even more efficiently than painkillers (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138477/).
“Virtual reality experience helps taking the child’s attention away from medical sampling and thus facilitates the working of the staff,” says the CEO of Pikkujätti Juha Viertola.
Saija Korela, a bio analyst who worked in the pilot, believes that the positive experiences the patient gains using this kind of a service in the laboratory help in the next medical sampling and can thus tend to prevent for example needle detestation to emerge.
The results of the pilot were very positive surprise even though good results were expected. Every family that participated in the pilot recommended the service and gave it rating 9 (in the scale of 4-10).
“Awesome! In our family medical sampling has always been a scary experience but this time we were both happy,” says a mother of an 8-year old daughter.
We believe that in the near future services like this will shape the hospital experiences more than we now think.
