The WOW Project (WOW): Wonders Of The World Through Virtual Reality for Hospitalized Children
Immersive Bedside Teaching for Hospitalized Pediatric Patient - A Prospective, Mixed-method, Cohort Study
Stanford University
100 participants
Jul 10, 2025
INTERVENTIONAL
Conditions
Summary
Hospitalized pediatric patients are unable to leave the hospital to engage in traditional learning environments. Patients often feel depressed, disconnected from learning, and socially withdrawn. The Stanford Chariot Program proposes a partnership with the Palo Alto Unified Hospital School at Stanford Children's Health to reignite patients' emotional well-being through learning. The WOW Project aims to use virtual reality (VR) to travel with hospitalized children to the Wonders of the World (WOW). Combining this immersive learning modality with complementary hands-on activities at the bedside, the investigators will transport them from their hospital room into a nurturing virtual environment to stimulate their emotional, mental, and social growth while they are physically healing. The investigators will evaluate their overall joy and awe of learning by using standardized emotional scales.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria3
- Between the age of 5 and 17.
- English speaking.
- Anticipated in-patient stay for more than 1 day.
Exclusion Criteria6
- Legal guardian not present to obtain consent
- Child with a significant neurological condition, or major developmental disability
- Child with active infection of the face or hand
- A history of severe motion sickness
- A history of seizures caused by flashing light
- Major surgery within the last 12 hours
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Interventions
After obtaining written consent, participants will be asked to complete a brief demographic survey and pre-intervention surveys (content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). They will then be equipped with a VR headset, Quest 3 (Meta, Inc., Menlo Park, CA) displaying the educational field trip. After the VR field trip, participants will participate in a complementary hands-on science experiment. At the conclusion of the experiment, patients will be asked to complete the post intervention surveys (i.e awe, content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). Additionally, for the first 20 participants, 15 participants will be randomly selected and asked to participate in a 5 open-ended question qualitative interview regarding engagement of the lesson. Audio will be recorded via zoom.
Locations(1)
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NCT06911996