Category Ranking

98%

Total Visits

921

Avg Visit Duration

2 minutes

Citations

20

Article Abstract

Background: Malignancy patients who need long-term hospitalization can feel loneliness affecting their quality of life. The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused visiting restrictions that could mean patients who might be missing out on family support and palliative care, therefore, need to adapt and change. We used virtual reality (VR) technology with the aim of reducing feelings of loneliness among these patients.

Objectives: In a small cohort setting, we aimed to clarify the usefulness of VR viewing for this purpose by text mining interviews with the patients in palliative care after their VR experience, and to clarify the feasibility of this program.

Design And Setting/subjects: Four consecutive Japanese patients in the palliative care unit viewed personalized familiar persons or places through VR goggles, while communicating by telephone. After the VR experience, text mining of the patients' interviews was used to extract the words for the frequency count and co-occurrence analysis.

Results: Four clusters were extracted: "relief from the pain of hospitalization by feeling safe and secure with family members nearby," "using VR to regain daily life," "immersive feeling of being in the same space as family," and "loneliness due to the realistic feeling of separation from the family through VR experience." There were no cases of VR sickness.

Conclusion: Our results attained by text mining suggest the promising potential of VR imaging of familiar surroundings for patients in palliative care.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10460958PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/pmr.2023.0017DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

palliative care
20
text mining
16
patients palliative
12
virtual reality
8
patients
6
palliative
5
care
5
reality images
4
images patients
4
patients hospital-based
4

Similar Publications

A qualitative study using in-depth interviews was conducted to identify the level of knowledge, beliefs, and perceptions of family members and healthcare workers regarding the use of morphine as a pain treatment for individuals at the end of life. The study included healthcare professionals and caregivers of individuals who had died from serious illnesses affiliated with a rural health center in an inland city in the western region of Uruguay between August 2021 and June 2022. The findings may contribute to understanding the determinants that influence opioid use in healthcare centers lacking access to specialized palliative care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As a life-limiting illness, dementia requires a holistic approach to care, where spiritual support plays a crucial role in helping individuals and their caregivers find meaning and solace. Our aim was to systematically map the research conducted on psychosocial interventions developed to provide spiritual support for people living with dementia and their caregivers from diagnosis and across the disease trajectory. A scoping review was conducted to explore the breadth of research on 'spiritual support' in dementia care, encompassing interventions, service delivery models, programs, toolkits, approaches, and activities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Palliative Care (PC) is a rapidly expanding field, with a more recent shift toward outpatient services to enhance patient care. Palliative Care educators can provide fulfilling outpatient PC experiences to trainees across various disciplines, including medical students, physician fellows, nurse practitioner students, and social work interns. We present five strategies for optimizing training in the outpatient PC setting.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Advanced cancer impacts the lives of both patients and their family caregivers. They often experience substantial declines in quality of life and physical, emotional, and spiritual distress that generate significant unmet psychosocial care needs. These effects are interrelated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Priorities for 'out-of-hours' home-based palliative care for professionals, patients, and family caregivers: A qualitative interview study.

Int J Nurs Stud

August 2025

Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing Midwifery and Palliative Care, Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King's College London, Bessemer Road, London SE5 9PJ, UK; Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton General Hospital, Elm Grove, Brighton, East Sussex

Background: People with advanced illness at home, and their families, rely on 'out-of-hours' services provided by community, primary and specialist palliative care services. Home is commonly expressed as the preferred place to be cared for and die, and an increasing proportion of people are dying at home, but what constitutes 'good' care is poorly understood from the combined perspectives of healthcare professionals and patients and family caregivers.

Objective: To understand the convergence and divergence of the perspectives of healthcare professionals with those of patients and family caregivers, on priorities for home-based palliative care in the 'out-of-hours' period in the UK.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF