Background
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) poses a significant threat to children’s health. Cognitive rehabilitation for pediatric TBI has the potential to improve the quality of life following the injury. Virtual reality (VR) can provide enriched cognitive training in a life-like but safe environment. However, existing VR applications for pediatric TBIs have primarily focused on physical rehabilitation.
Objective
This study aims to design and develop an integrative hardware and software VR system to provide rehabilitation of executive functions (EF) for children with TBI, particularly in 3 core EF: inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility.
Methods
The VR training system was developed by an interdisciplinary team with expertise in best practices of VR design, developmental psychology, and pediatric TBI rehabilitation. Pilot usability testing of this novel system was conducted among 10 healthy children and 4 children with TBIs.
Results
Our VR-based interactive cognitive training system was developed to provide assistive training on core EF following pediatric TBI. Pilot usability testing showed adequate user satisfaction ratings for both the hardware and software components of the VR system.
Conclusions
This project designed and tested a novel VR-based system for executive function rehabilitation that is specifically adapted to children following TBI.
Social determinants of health (SDOH) significantly impact individuals' engagement with the healthcare system. To address SDOH-related oral health disparities, providers must be equipped with knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) to understand how SDOH affect patients and how to mitigate these effects. Traditional dental school curricula provide limited training on recognizing SDOH or developing empathy for those with SDOH-related access barriers. This study describes the design and evaluation of such a virtual reality (VR)based simulation in dental training. We hypothesize the simulation will increase post-training KSAs.
Methods:We developed "MPATHI" (Making Professionals Able THrough Immersion), a scripted VR simulation where participants take the role of an English-speaking caregiver with limited socioeconomic resources seeking dental care for a child in a Spanish-speaking country. The simulation is a combination of 360• video recording and virtual scenes delivered via VR headsets. A pilot was conducted with 29 dental residents/faculty, utilizing a pre-post design to 856
Concern is growing about the number of elderly people dying of hypothermia. A register was compiled of patients over 75 on a general practitioner's list who were identified from their medical records as being at risk of hypothermia, having two or more established risk factors. Twenty four patients from this register were visited early in winter by a doctor to discuss how hypothermia could be prevented. They were then revisited during very cold weather to see whether they had made any changes. Several improvements to heating arrangements were noted, but the median temperature in the bedrooms of houses with no central heating was 10TC below the World Health Organisation's recommended temperature. In addition, eight patients were not visited daily.Even with media publicity and visits from carers and a doctor, 17 of the 24 elderly people studied continued to live in an environment in which they were at risk of developing hypothermia.
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