Virtual Reality Implementation for Acute Care Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) gaming is an effective tool for occupational therapists in an acute care setting to help patients reach their therapy goals. This capstone project focused on helping the occupational therapy staff at two acute care hospital settings begin implementation of VR into therapy sessions with their patients. This goal was accomplished through staff training and education on the therapeutic use of technology as well as implementation of the technology with patients during OT sessions. Staff education included 9 different training sessions with the staff and was measured using a staff survey at the beginning and end of the project. Impact of VR on patient's therapy session was measured through patient self-report of various factors including pain, anxiety, fatigue, and nausea pre and post session. Data was collected at the beginning and end of VR based OT sessions as well as typical OT treatment sessions for comparative data. The conclusion of this project found improvement on the staff's pre and post training survey results on the variables of perceived ability to use VR in therapy and perception of benefit of VR use. The VR implementation data analysis found that there was no statistical difference between the pre and post session results for any other variables measured between the typical OT and VR sessions, indicating that VR is equally effective as typical OT treatment regarding the variables measured.