Reducing Pain and Anxiety During Dressing Changes After Burn Surgery Using Virtual Reality

Burn injury and its treatment is an intensely painful experience. Most severely injured patients require numerous dressing changes and skin grafting procedures (removing skin from healthy part of the body and moving it to damaged area of the body). This procedure cause extensive pain and anxiety and many patients can become dependent on pain killers during their hospital stay and throughout rehabilitation. This can delay reintegration into society and increase the chance of opioid dependence. An effective pain management plan plays a large role in patient recovery. In addition to the physical pain experienced by these patients, burn injury is an intensely stressful and emotional life experience. This study will use a non-drug approach to reduce pain and extensive use of pain killers (opioids) during dressing changes. In particular, the study will use an immersive (allows to experience computer-generated environment as a real world) Virtual reality (VR) distraction tool during dressing change after skin graft surgery. Individuals who will decide to participate in this study will be asked to wear headgear to view immersive 360 videos specially designed by the study team. Before and after this exposure participants will be asked to complete a measurement of their anxiety level (VAS) and rate their pain. This study will help to determine if using VR as a distraction tool during painful dressing changes will reduce pain and anxiety, and therefore opioid medications requirements, and will rely on participants experience and adapt VR videos according to participants' response.

Inclusion Criteria: * Age ≥ 18 * Patients anticipated to receive only one skin autograft surgery for acute burn injury at RTBC (patients may have received an allograft skin procedure prior to the autograft) * Patients who will require inpatient stay for at least two consecutive daily dressing changes * Patients alert and oriented, and able to watch immersive video and respond to questions Exclusion Criteria: * Patients on mechanical ventilation * Patients receiving intravenous sedation * Patients with significant face, neck or scalp burn wounds * Patients with confirmed resistant bacteria (MRSA, CPE, VRE) * Patients with history of significant motion sickness (i.e. occur during exposure to physical, visual and virtual motion, cybersickness, etc.) verbally declared by patient * Patients unable to communicate