Virtual Reality use in Hospice for Pain & AnxietyAngelicarehospice
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An increasing number of hospice care providers are incorporating virtual reality (VR) technology into patient care to help reduce pain, anxiety and feelings of isolation. Hospice Savannah worked with the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) to create a VR program that has had positive impacts on patients and students alike.
In collaboration with SCAD virtual reality professor Teri Yarbrow, Hospice of Savannah developed the VR for Good project as a virtual reality program for patients featuring three different interactive experiences — a hot air balloon ride, an undersea adventure and a farm visit — that can be used for physical and emotional therapy. The hospice’s president and CEO Kathleen Benton spearheaded a community-based collaboration to bring VR experiences to patients and families after witnessing firsthand the impacts that virtual reality can have in alleviating suffering.
“I had just started at best hospice services Savannah a little over a year ago when I met Teri Yarbrow, before the virtual reality program was set up as a class at SCAD and more of a vision for volunteer community work,” said Kathleen Benton, president and CEO. “As the only community nonprofit hospice in town, I wanted more inner workings within community-run organizations that set us apart more for our patients and families because of the rapport already built. I had also lost a brother not too long ago who was a student there in industrial design. He was very dependent on technology as a patient himself who had a chronic and terminal illness his whole life. I can remember when the first VR came out and it helped him with anxiety and mentally just to escape the imprisonment of his bed and of his body. Proteus Syndrome had a stronghold on him every day pain- and mobility-wise. He was trapped, and VR gave that escape to him.”
Shortly following his passing, the Daniel DeLoach Memorial Fund was established in 2017 as a foundation supporting technology for patients. The foundation helps to support the VR for Good project, and further efforts to seek technology grants are ongoing. Additional funding stems from costsharing partnerships, according to Benton.
“We found a way to share some costs and partnered with our amazing creators, who then did it as a class,” said Benton. “This kind of thing doesn’t have to cost a bunch of money with thousands in investment. You can buy an Oculus [virtual reality system] for a couple hundred dollars. No matter what question you ask when it comes to cost, the answer is you need to be innovative. If it’s something important to vulnerable patients who are going to pass away and need this sooner than later, then you just have to be creative. The collaborative effort we have allowed for that, we all carry different costs and different sweat equity. In the end, nothing that we’ve done has been expensive.”
SCAD began offering a bachelor of fine arts degree in immersive reality in fall of 2018, then the first dedicated degree in this field in the United States. Working with students, Yarbrow developed VR for Good with three concepts directed towards pain relief and physical therapy, with the underwater experience more passive and calming for patients while the farming experience involves more mobility.
“I see VR as promising for the future as we build a library of experiences,” said Yarbrow. “Some are more engaging and some more meditative and lifeenhancing. ‘Apples and AntHills’ [virtual farm visit] is one that involves motor exercises, but there’s all different kinds of ways that you could incorporate that at a level patients are able to do. ‘Nalu’ is directed towards pain relief as very passive. You can move your hands and see bubbles around them, or look at whales, dolphins and turtles. The ‘Swimming with the Dolphins’ experience allows the patient to be a diver and facilitates swimming. You can hear the dolphins around you, you’re moving and there’s soothing music. A palliative care California patient having pain came in and he watched this experience four times in a row with a gigantic smile on his face when he was done. It totally shifted whatever was going on in this perception of his pain.”
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