Factors Influencing Virtual Reality as a Distraction Tool for Venipuncture in Children: Observational Pilot Feasibility Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used as a distraction tool for painful procedures in children. Studies have shown variable benefit but have not identified factors to maximize utility. Objective: This study aimed to undertake a feasibility study to investigate factors influencing virtual reality headset (VRH) utility for venipuncture and cannulation. Methods: Children admitted as inpatients were recruited and given a VRH during anticipated venipuncture or cannulation. Feedback from participants, parents, and operators was obtained through questionnaires and the Wong-Baker Faces Scale (WBFS). Results: Thirteen children of a target 32 (41%), aged a median of 7 (range 5-12) years, were recruited to the study; 9 (69%) parents and 7 (54%) participants reported a positive VR experience, found VRH comfortable, and wanted repeat application for future venisection or cannulation. However, patient recruitment was suboptimal at 41% (binomial 95% CI 24%-59%) of the target, as busy operators undertaking venisection or cannulation on eligible patients were unable to spare time for VRH use during the COVID-19 pandemic. The preprocedure time spent with VRH was associated with participants' positive experience of VR distraction (median 15, IQR 2.5-50 vs 180, IQR 120-450) seconds (P=.02). Five (38.4%) participants removed the VRH prior to procedure; these were relatively young compared to those who continued VRH (median 6, IQR 5.00-7.00 vs 10, IQR 6.75-12.00 years), suggesting better acceptance of VR in older children. There was no significant difference in WBFS pain ratings before (median 0, IQR 0-10) or after the procedure (median 0, IQR 0-6), with many children choosing 0 ("no hurt") at initial assessment. By contrast, parent and doctor or phlebotomist responses indicated that VR reduced pain and anxiety (n=9, 69%), in agreement with participant perception (n=7, 54%; Cohen κ=0.68). Conclusions: VR as a distraction tool in children is influenced by age and preprocedure familiarity, suggesting that the optimal use is in older children with greater cognitive and emotional maturity. Multidimensional feedback from participants, parents, and investigators should be obtained to test the true efficacy of VR in future studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".