Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2009
Randomized Controlled TrialVirtual reality on mobile phones to reduce anxiety in outpatient surgery.
When undergo ambulatory surgical operations, the majority of patients experience high level of anxiety. Different experimental studies have shown that distraction techniques are effective in reducing pain and related anxiety. Since Virtual reality (VR) has been demonstrated a good distraction technique, it has been repeatedly used in hospital contexts for reducing pain in burned patients, but it has never been used during surgical operations. ⋯ In particular, we measured the degree to which anxiety associated with surgical intervention was reduced by distracting patients with immersive VR provided through a cell phone connected to an HMD compared to a no-distraction control condition. A significant reduction of anxiety was obtained after 45 minutes of operation in the VR group, but not in the control group and, after 90 minutes, the reduction was larger in the experimental group than in other one. In conclusion, this study presents an innovative promising technique to reduce anxiety during surgical interventions, even if more studies are necessary to investigate its effectiveness in other kinds of operations and in larger numbers of patients.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2009
Intensive care admission and discharge - critical decision-making points.
Delivery of intensive care has many critical points impacting the outcomes of critically ill patients. Two important key events in intensive care are patients' admission and discharge procedures. ⋯ To reveal the complex decision-making, we studied the decision-making processes and information needs of intensive care charge nurses during patients' admission and discharge procedures. We identified several interconnected decision-making steps during these procedures.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2009
Comparative StudyRetention of knowledge after repeated virtual world CPR training in high school students.
We investigated the retention of knowledge and skills after repeated Virtual World MOS (VWMOS) team training of CPR in high school students. An experimental group of 9 students were compared to a control group of 7 students. ⋯ Although we found no significant differences in general basic life support knowledge, the changes that occurred in the CPR guidelines were retained 18 months after the last Virtual World training session in the experimental group. Moreover fewer deviations from the CPR guidelines occurred.
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An interactive, video game-based training module, Burn Center, was developed to simulate the real-life emergency events of a mass casualty disaster scenario, involving in 40 victims. The game contains two components - triage and resuscitation. ⋯ After complete the triage component, the player will then take on the role of a burn care provider, balancing the clinical needs of multiple burn patients through a 36-hour resuscitation period, using familiar computer-simulated hospital devices. Once complete, players of Burn Center will come away with applicable skills and knowledge of burn care, for both field triage and initial resuscitation of the burn patients.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2009
The expert explorer: a tool for hospital data visualization and adverse drug event rules validation.
An important part of adverse drug events (ADEs) detection is the validation of the clinical cases and the assessment of the decision rules to detect ADEs. For that purpose, a software called "Expert Explorer" has been designed by Ideea Advertising. ⋯ Experts can then review the rules, the hospital stays that match the rules, and finally give their advice thanks to specialized forms. Then the rules can be validated, invalidated, or improved (knowledge elicitation phase).