Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality (VR) is an augmented reality created through a simulation of a three-dimension environment. The simulations are designed to be immersive and realistic to create a make-believe world. Hence, virtual reality has become a hot topic with developers finding new innovative ways to use VR away from the regular use for games and videos. Despite being a new technology, virtual reality is essential in healthcare, especially in its effectiveness in pain control.
Virtual reality has found its use in the healthcare industry with developers establishing its use in pain reduction. Besides, VR analgesia is a medical term that has been developed to refer to the use of virtual reality for pain control (Gold et al. 210). The method has been used primarily for children when medication includes painful procedures such as drawing blood. Also, research shows that when children are under the influence of virtual reality, they experience less anxiety and pain during these processes (Mitrousia & Giotakos 277). Immersive VR was established to draw on the cognitive attention hence removing the patient’s care from the hospital environment into the virtual environment.
Virtual reality is targeted to be used for more extended periods and not just short periods of pain control during injections and blood drawing. Besides, it has been used in the treatment of children with sickle cell anaemia. Therefore, these children have a genetic condition that can cause extreme pain when the blood cells are not able to receive enough oxygen. The whole experience is acutely painful, and the effects of treatment are also undesirable. Using virtual reality during and after treatment of sickle cell anaemia can help alleviate the children’s hospital experience (Kenney & Leonard 199). Immersive VR such as those that create amazing virtual environments will help children by drawing their attention away from the hospital and the pain to a world that is fun and exciting.
In conclusion, we realize that VR has a future in the healthcare industry, mainly because of its ability to draw on cognitive attention. Its use as a pain control method should be researched on more conditions where patients need pain alleviated.