Abstract

The expectation for patients surviving admission to the Intensive Care Unit is that they make the best possible recovery. Rehabilitation from the point of physiological stability is directed at reducing the impact of the consequences of critical illness. There is growing interest in the use of interactive technologies, including virtual reality and commercial-off-the-shelf gaming consoles, to enhance the trajectory and improve the patient experience of recovery.

The “Restorative Virtual Environments for Rehabilitation” (ReVERe) programme of work explored the feasibility of use of interactive systems by patients recovering from critical illness, severe burns or major trauma. The research was funded by the Defence Medical Services and undertaken by the University of Birmingham Human Interface Technologies Team, in collaboration with the critical care research team at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. The group designed, produced and evaluated the feasibility of four novel interactive systems to improve sleep, pain management, pulmonary and physical rehabilitation. 

Cohort and intervention choice were informed by the development of programme theories describing how the interventions might work. These were used to explore potential mediators and moderators of response to the proposed interventions. Human-centred design and usability engineering processes were combined with methods to evaluate the novel systems as complex interventions with the challenging clinical settings of the high dependency Burns and Intensive Care Units.

Additional Information

This presentation was given at the 8th Annual Homerton Simulation Conference, Homerton University Hospital, London, UK, on 6 December 2018.

Conflicts of interest: none declared.