We gave palliative care patients VR therapy. More than 50% said it helped reduce pain and depression symptoms

By Tobias Loetscher, Associate Professor, University of South Australia
Gregory Crawford, Professor in Palliative Medicine, University of Adelaide

People in palliative care are dealing with serious, non-curable illness. Every day can be filled with severe physical, psychological and emotional pain.

Palliative care staff work hard to help make patients as comfortable as possible and provide strong emotional support. Meaningful activities can help but patients often aren’t well enough to do the things they really love, such as travel. We wondered whether virtual reality (VR) could help.

To find out, we supported 16 palliative care patients in an acute ward to do three 20-minute VR sessions, and asked them how they felt…

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