JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Virtual reality (VR) has become a powerful tool for enhancing experiences of patients with critical illness; however, there is a lack of research on the comparison of VR intervention effects on healthy and hospitalized children’s psychological cognition of VR.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to evaluate the pleasurable experience of VR and the impact of VR on hospitalized children’s travel expectations and hope by adopting electrocardiography (ECG) and the questionnaire mixed methods to increase the objectivity of research.

Methods:

The subjects of this research were children between seven and 18 years of age. Eighteen hospitalized children with leukemia were placed in the experimental group, and thirty healthy children were placed in the control group. A questionnaire was designed to understand the differences in the children’s feeling of hope, and their physiological data was collected through ECG.

Results:

There was no significant difference in the sense of hope between the experimental group and the control group before using VR, but there was a significant difference (P=.049) after using VR to experience tourist attractions. In addition, heartbeats and indicators from ECG were found to be significant when the two groups were using VR: standard deviation of all normal to normal intervals (SDNN) (P=.035) was related to the parasympathetic nerves, and low frequency (LW) (P=.008) was related to the sympathetic nerves. The results indicated that the responses of the hospitalized children and the healthy children during the VR experience were different.

Conclusions:

Both the hospitalized children and the healthy children felt pleasure when using VR to experience new things and had expectations about traveling. However, it was more difficult to stimulate the sense of hope in the hospitalized children than in the healthy children. This study suggests increasing health care workers’ attention to hospitalized children’s needs and psychological feelings in practice, as well as helping hospitalized children make psychological adjustments to reduce the impact and pressure of long-term hospitalization. Future studies are recommended to examine the different contents of VR and the medical conditions of hospitalized children.