VR Breaks on Shift-worker Alertness

George Washington University (GW)

Status

Terminated

Conditions

Burnout, Professional

Treatments

Other: Virtual Reality Headset with curated content

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04132141

051818

Details and patient eligibility

About

Physician wellness is a hot topic today. Fatigue and alertness are common challenges faced during long work hours. Virtual reality is an immersive technology which has been demonstrated to distract people from pain, stress, and anxiety. Guided relaxation and meditation can impact alertness. There is no literature reporting the impact immersive technologies like VR sessions could have on alertness, a critical area of concern in health care today which impacts physician wellness, quality of care, and duty hours.

The investigator's long-term goal is to develop solutions that can be used across industries to improve human alertness. To solve this problem, the investigators propose to test the feasibility of using an immersive virtual reality experience as a scheduled break and measure the interventions effect on post-break alertness, stress, and anxiety. Previous work at our Institution has demonstrated that VR experiences can reduce pain, stress and anxiety in patients presenting to the emergency department.

Full description

The investigator's long-term goal is to develop solutions that can be used across industries to improve human alertness. To solve this problem, the investigator proposes to test the feasibility of using an immersive virtual reality experience as a scheduled break and measure the interventions effect on post-break alertness, stress, and anxiety. Previous work at our Institution has demonstrated that VR experiences can reduce pain, stress and anxiety in patients presenting to the emergency department.

Hypothesis: Short immersive VR breaks are expected to increase alertness and reduce stress and anxiety in residents, physicians, and medical students working on shifts as compared to unstructured breaks.

Aim 1 will establish a biometric footprint of activities relating to the shift of a resident, physician, medical student, or nurse. Understanding how biometric parameters change when performing different activities will establish a baseline for comparing the effect of immersive VR breaks.

Aim 2 will seek to tag the activities a resident, physician, medical student, or nurse is performing during the shift to add context to the biometric data

Aim 3 will be to evaluate metrics for alertness, stress and anxiety of a resident, physician, medical student, or nurse during their shift and specifically determine how they change with immersive VR intervention

The proposed study will establish a new model for managing physician alertness, stress and anxiety and provide insights into viable and effective interventions to improve these parameters for other occupations. The expected improvement in alertness and reduction in stress and anxiety could be highly impactful in creating a safer workplace. These methods will also help derive biometric maps of physician activities that could be used for a variety of physician wellness interventions. The impact of this study could be wide reaching in occupational health.

Enrollment

25 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 65 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

GW residents, physicians, medical students, and nurses between the ages of 18-65.
will have at least 5 shifts over the study period in the GW Hospital

Exclusion criteria

Unable to consent to study due to cognitive difficulty
Current diagnosis of epilepsy, dementia, or other neurological disease that may prevent use of VR hardware and software
Sensitivity to flashing light or motion
Pregnancy, or a medical condition where the participant is prone to frequent nausea or dizziness
Recent stroke
Injury to the eyes, face, neck, or arms that prevents comfortable use of VR hardware or software, or safe use of the hardware (e.g., open sores, wounds, or skin rash on face)