Virtual Reality to Support Healthcare Workers in Managing Stress and Anxiety During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey

Virtual reality appears an interesting technology to offer healthcare workers innovative programs for managing stress and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic and when the crisis will be over. However, the unfamiliarity and the cost of virtual reality could represent significant technical and socioeconomic obstacles in its adoption in the mental health panorama. Therefore, this study aimed to explore in a sample of doctors and nurses the use of virtual reality, their interest in this technology, and the availability to spend for purchasing a virtual reality system. Forty-four doctors and nurses completed an online survey (72.2% female;mean age 41.5 ± 10.7). Results showed that: (a) most healthcare practitioners have never tried virtual reality and have a low level of knowledge of this technology, regardless of profession, gender, and age group;(b) healthcare workers showed medium interest in using virtual reality-based programs for stress and anxiety management, both at home and in the hospital, with differences between men and women (p <.01);(c) the cost of virtual reality systems represents for many doctors and nurses a critical barrier to the use of this technology for psychological support. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Virtual Reality Based Application for Children with ADHD: Design and Usability Evaluation

This work presents a VR based serious game for children with ADHD and aims at providing an evaluation of the acceptability and the usability of an application developed to create a meaningful and motivating environment for the child, capable of supporting the development of the various attentional components. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the evaluation was performed online offering also the opportunity to test the feasibility of a validation remotely performed. The expert involved in the study expressed a positive judgment on the application, considering it understandable and easy to use. Moreover, they confirmed that the actions performed by the operator, during the remote sessions, were clear and made it possible to understand the tasks required within by the serious game, thus enabling to provide evidence on such kind of remote validation. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.