| چکیده انگلیسی مقاله |
Background: Hypertension is a major public health problem that may lead to cardiovascular, renal, visual, and auditory complications. According to previous studies, apart from pharmacological treatments, other factors are also effective in controlling hypertension, such as healthcare providers' empathy toward patients. As an innovative tool, virtual reality (VR) has been used in recent years to promote empathy. This study aims to investigate the effects of VR on the empathy of medical students, medical residents, and fellowship students toward hypertensive patients.
Methods: In this experimental study, 198 medical learners, after stratification based on their program level, were randomly assigned to the VR (intervention) group and the Pamphlet (control) group. At first, both groups filled out the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) Questionnaire. Seven days later, participants of the VR group were exposed to a VR scenario under the normal audiovisual condition at the first minute, and under visually simulated Glaucoma, Macular edema, Cataract, and Vitreous Hemorrhage with simultaneous tinnitus sound as visual and auditory complications of hypertension, subsequently. The participants in the control group were exposed to a written pamphlet about visual and auditory complications of hypertension. Afterward, both groups answered the JSE Questionnaire again. Finally, 93 participants of the VR group and 88 participants of the control group were eligible for analysis.
Results: The results showed that although there was no statistically significant difference between the empathy scores of both groups at the pre-intervention phase (P-Value: 0.706), after exposure to VR and pamphlet, the empathy scores of the VR group (112.46±12.67) were significantly higher than those of the control group (108.17±12.59) at the post-intervention phase (P-Value: 0.024).
Conclusions: This study showed that innovative technologies like VR can promote empathy among future healthcare providers toward patients, which may lead to more effective hypertension control. |
| نویسندگان مقاله |
| Seyed Farzin Mircheraghi
Internal Medicine Department, School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
| Majid Khadem-Rezaiyan
Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
| Abbas Ali Zeraati
Kidney Transplantation Complications Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Science, Mashhad, Iran.
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