Main findings
Compared to standard care, the virtual reality pain management
intervention had a large effect in reducing pain and anxiety in
outpatient hysteroscopy. This effect was robust, after controlling for
baseline pain and anxiety expectations and a range of patient
covariates. Staff and majority of the patients found the procedure to be
both feasible and acceptable and patients reported a range of
experiences, suggestive of the mechanisms by which VR technology may
influence pain and anxiety via immersion, relaxation, distraction and
imagery.
The study additionally demonstrated willingness of patients to
participate and identified barriers to recruitment, non–participation,
compliance or standardisation of healthcare providers care pathways
through a mixed methods approach using qualitative data to draw useful
insights complementing the findings from the quantitative analysis, in
order to support future research and development in this area. Insights
generated from the themes suggested offering a multimodal pain relief
strategy to improve experience at outpatient hysteroscopy. Qualitative
analysis suggested patient profiling based on history, taking into
consideration patient preferences by offering a variety of distraction
techniques with a range of videos to choose from were they to choose
virtual reality as a distraction technique. The analysis offered key
insights into patient expectations concerning the degree of pain relief
possible with virtual reality technology and implementation strategies
to facilitate around transfer of research finding into clinical setting.