The WOW Project (WOW): Wonders Of The World Through Virtual Reality for Hospitalized Children

N/ARecruitingNCT06911996

Stanford University100 enrolled

Overview

Hospitalized pediatric patients are unable to leave the hospital to engage in traditional learning environments. Patients often feel depressed, disconnected from learning, and socially withdrawn. The Stanford Chariot Program proposes a partnership with the Palo Alto Unified Hospital School at Stanford Children's Health to reignite patients' emotional well-being through learning. The WOW Project aims to use virtual reality (VR) to travel with hospitalized children to the Wonders of the World (WOW). Combining this immersive learning modality with complementary hands-on activities at the bedside, the investigators will transport them from their hospital room into a nurturing virtual environment to stimulate their emotional, mental, and social growth while they are physically healing. The investigators will evaluate their overall joy and awe of learning by using standardized emotional scales.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

100

Conditions

Virtual Reality

Interventions

After obtaining written consent, participants will be asked to complete a brief demographic survey and pre-intervention surveys (content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). They will then be equipped with a VR headset, Quest 3 (Meta, Inc., Menlo Park, CA) displaying the educational field trip. After the VR field trip, participants will participate in a complementary hands-on science experiment. At the conclusion of the experiment, patients will be asked to complete the post intervention surveys (i.e awe, content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). Additionally, for the first 20 participants, 15 participants will be randomly selected and asked to participate in a 5 open-ended question qualitative interview regarding engagement of the lesson. Audio will be recorded via zoom.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 5 YearsMax age: 17 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Between the age of 5 and 17. * English speaking. * Anticipated in-patient stay for more than 1 day. Exclusion Criteria: * Legal guardian not present to obtain consent * Child with a significant neurological condition, or major developmental disability * Child with active infection of the face or hand * A history of severe motion sickness * A history of seizures caused by flashing light * Major surgery within the last 12 hours

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Assess the impact of VR-based field trips on the feeling of awe of the pediatric inpatient population

The primary outcome will be AWE measured by the AWE-SF Survey - The Awe Experience Short Form Scale. The survey contains 12 items about awe experience. Each item was rated on a 7-point scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree).

Time frame: immediately after intervention

Secondary Outcomes

Change in the number of correct answers of the content knowledge

Change in number of correct answers of the content knowledge using Bloom's Taxonomy questioning. Participants will respond to 5 questions, two questions about comprehension, one question about application, one question about analysis and one question about evaluation. Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the higher number of correct answer.

Time frame: Day 1 baseline, Day 1 immediately after intervention

Change in a patients' well-being as measured through the World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5)

The WHO (Five) Well-Being Index is a participant-reported outcome measure that assesses current mental well being. Questionnaire contains 5 questions . Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the corresponding feeling exists all the time.