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The Sim Cafe~
The Sim Cafe~
Revolutionizing Veteran Care: The Impact of Virtual Reality at the VA with Dr. Anne Bailey and Caitlin Rawlins
Ever wondered how virtual reality can revolutionize healthcare? Join us as we dive into an enlightening conversation with Dr. Anne Bailey and Caitlin Rawlins from the VA, who are pioneering the use of immersive technology to transform the care veterans receive. Anne, the pharmacy practitioner and executive director of the Strat Lab, and Caitlin, a registered nurse and Director of Clinical Tech Innovation, share their inspiring journey from conventional healthcare roles to spearheading VR initiatives. Learn about how their collaboration over the past seven years has led to innovative solutions for post-operative pain and anxiety management.
Discover how the VA is making waves with VR technology through veteran experience events across the country, engaging nearly 350 veterans in the past year and a half. With VR now in use at 165 VA sites, including medical centers and outpatient clinics, we delve into impactful initiatives like the firearm safe handling module developed in conjunction with the Veteran Crisis Line. This groundbreaking module offers a safe and realistic environment to teach firearm terminology and safe storage practices, playing a crucial role in suicide prevention.
Finally, hear compelling stories of veterans whose lives have been transformed by VR. From managing chronic pain at home to overcoming PTSD and even improving mental well-being for those with cognitive impairments, VR is making significant strides in healthcare. Learn about the collaboration between veterans, clinicians, and developers to create customized VR environments, complete with mindfulness content, deep breathing exercises, and exposure therapy. Listen to strategies for managing resistant learners and the impressive impact VR has had on reducing opioid use post-surgery. Don't miss this episode packed with inspiring success stories and the future potential of VR in transforming veteran care.
Anne and Caitlin's email address- vaimmersive@va.gov
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The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Sim Solutions or our sponsors. This week's podcast is sponsored by Innovative Sim Solutions. Are you interested in the journey of simulation accreditation? Do you plan to design a new simulation center or expand your existing center? What about taking your program to the next level? Give Deb Tauber from Innovative Sim Solutions a call to support you in all your simulation needs. With years of experience, Deb can coach your team to make your simulation dreams become reality. Learn more at www. innovativesimsolutions. com or just reach out to Deb Contact today. Welcome The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, Deb Tauber, and co-host Jerrod Jeffries, our host Deb Tauber and co-host Jerrod Jeffries, as they sit down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new The Sim Cafe.
Deb Tauber:Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. And today we're here with Anne and Caitlin, and they're from the VA. And Anne, why don't you tell our guests a little bit about yourself?
Anne Bailey:Yeah, I'd be glad to. So my name is Anne Bailey. I'm a pharmacy practitioner by training. I have grown up in the VA, I did my residency in VA, but now I am the executive director of the Strat Lab and the goal of our program is to identify the most disruptive technology that, if it proves successful, could really transform how we think about healthcare delivery and experience. And as a part of that, our largest portfolio of effort is VA Immersive, where we oversee the implementation of immersive technology across the entire healthcare system. So I am the lead for VA Immersive.
Deb Tauber:Thank you, Caitlin. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to our guests as well? Absolutely.
Caitlin Rollins:So I'm Caitlin Rollins. I'm a registered nurse by clinical backgrounds. I'm currently in the Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning within the VA and my actual title is the Director of Clinical Tech Innovation. But of course I play a role as well in VA Immersive.
Deb Tauber:Thank you. Why don't you guys enlighten our guests on what you're doing, what you're leading at the VA as far as virtual reality and immersive experiences?
Anne Bailey:Absolutely so I can tell you one perspective of the story and then Pastor Caitlin let her share her perspective as well. So we started this together about seven years ago. I was an innovation specialist at the VA in Asheville, North Carolina, and also a practitioner as well. Caitlin was a bedside nurse and brought to me a project that she'd been working on for using virtual reality specifically for post-operative knee pain and anxiety. It had some really compelling and exciting results not only clinical results, but a lot of evidence of veteran and staff engagement. At the same time, I was working with a group of people in the 3D printing world who are creating this 3D printing network, bringing people together, basically around a particular technology in a community space. And so when we think about that kind of network not the wires that connect things, but the people that connect each other and we saw an opportunity to take an exciting technology that was showing a lot of promise, take that and then expand it across the entire healthcare system by building a community around it.
Caitlin Rollins:Yeah, I mean I think that that covers a lot of it for sure. I mean it's been a wild journey that Ann and I have been on for the past seven years, but whenever I found immersive technology at the bedside initially, like I said, it was really as an opportunity to find something else to offer patients as a non-pharmacological approach or intervention to help with pain and anxiety management. And, as Ann said, that initial pilot was so successful. You know, the first patient that we ever used it with was 84 years old, had just had a total knee replacement, Couldn't. His pain was just not being very well helped by opioids or other pain medications. This older gentleman put a VR headset on his head and all of a sudden he had complete relief from his pain.
Caitlin Rollins:And it was in that moment that I was like all right, well, I wasn't sure I was anticipating this was going to work as well as it did, but it did. And after that initial data collection, of course, connected with Anne, my innovation specialist at Asheville, and started trying to brainstorm ways to bring this to the broader organization in different ways, and that inevitably ended up with the first community of practice around it. You know the smattering of folks who are really interested in the technology but weren't really sure how to really get it off the ground yet, and that, of course, has grown significantly over the years to become this giant network and resource hub for our VA employees that are wanting to use this technology to improve veteran healthcare.
Deb Tauber:Caitlin, can you talk to me a little bit about how you got started with this? One day you just decided oh, I think I'm going to bring in a headset to my patients. How do you? You know? Where did this come from?
Caitlin Rollins:It was something kind of like that. I suppose I was notorious for being the nurse on a very busy post-operative ward that was interested in alternative medicine and complementary and integrative health, and our chief of orthopedic surgery at the time was like hey, Caitlin, I know you're into all these other things outside of standard medicine. I have a friend who is a practicing anesthesiologist who started a virtual reality company. They really want to work with the VA and want to help veterans. Would you mind taking a look at what they've created to see if you think there's anything to it?
Caitlin Rollins:And myself, you know I'm an artist by background as well, and so for me it was like this interesting intersection of two halves of my life, where I'd been previously an artist and became a nurse and now all of a sudden this technology comes up that brings together imagery and positive distraction and expression and then turns it into something that's also beneficial in a healthcare setting. So it was that, that cool combination of things that really got my attention and made me want to push it through the pathway that got it into actual practice, which I can tell you is not without its grief and barriers bringing new technology into healthcare, but it was something that was worthwhile after I experienced it the first time.
Deb Tauber:I love that grief and barriers because every time someone gets away from something else they grieve that loss.
Jerrod Jeffries:Caitlin, I also want to make sure I understood. It was the first patient. It was about seven years ago you were mentioning, but was the first user. Was that the 80, 84 year old?
Caitlin Rollins:?
Jerrod Jeffries:misunderstanding. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean to actually embrace and kind of accept this mask going on his face to be like, okay, this is what's going on and pushing forward to. I think that's that really shows the power of what you're doing.
Caitlin Rollins:Yeah, absolutely. And I know I don't know if you want to mention that story that we just had come through today, actually about an older gentleman and one of the immersive products.
Anne Bailey:Yeah, somebody sent us a story today of someone about the same age I can't remember if he was 82 or 84. I could probably pull it up pretty quickly, but they actually sent a device into his home and he was able to learn to use the technology quickly over Zoom. And so we have seen and continue to gather data. You know, one of the things that we do is these veteran experience events, where our team two or three members of our team go to the VA medical centers around the country at their invitation and have, you know, a four to five hour demo day. Basically, we set up headsets around the room and veterans and staff can come and go as they like and give us feedback on what they think of the technology. Would they like to see more of it? How? You know? How did they? How was their experience?
Anne Bailey:And so far, we've done this at six different medical centers over the last year and a half and almost 350 veterans more than 60% had never used the technology before, but 91% said it was easy to use or very easy to use and 95% say they want more of it in their, in their healthcare, which is, you know, the story that that Caitlin was telling of the origin is really interesting is the thing that people don't always know about this story is how many times we were told no, initially like that. We were crazy that virtual health care wasn't a thing. But the fact that veterans and staff, the more they got their heads and headsets, the more they tried it and the more we were able to work together as a community to lower some of those barriers of adoption, the the more it took off.
Jerrod Jeffries:That's incredible. So you said it's been done across six sites.
Anne Bailey:Now the veteran experience has been done across six sites, but we have over 2,800 frontline staff engaged in utilizing this technology at 165 unique VA sites of care, 154 of those being medical centers, 18 others being some of our community-based outpatient clinics or vet centers, things like that but 154 of VA's 172 medical centers are utilizing this technology now across at least 40 different indications for use. We probably need to send out another ask for how everybody's using it, because I hear things I'm like I don't think we knew they were doing that with technology. So it's been a lot of fun to see the community really take hold of this and run with it.
Deb Tauber:So in your role as an innovation specialist. How did they come up with that role? How does that work?
Anne Bailey:How does that work? That's a great question. So the office that Caitlin is in now, the Office of Healthcare, innovation and Learning, has four different programs across that office. One is the innovation ecosystem, which is really focused on building the innovation muscle of frontline staff, and that's where the innovation specialists live Caitlin I don't know what's the latest number, it was like 40-something medical centers.
Caitlin Rollins:Jerrod, it's at least 40. I know that they're adding like six to eight new sites in October too, but that's at least 40. I know that they're adding like six to eight new sites in October too, but that's at least 40.
Anne Bailey:So as that program grows, what it means is those facilities are dedicating to put at least one full-time equivalent staff person, so it could be four people that fill the role, but usually it's one that are really focused on building that innovation culture, facilitating that for staff. Both Caitlin and I have been innovation specialists in the past. And then the other three programs in the office, just for your awareness, one is Center for Care and Payment Innovation, so they're focused on innovative business and care models. We have special permission from Congress to try some different things. As you know, congress is our board of directors, so that's really important. There is also SimLearn, which is of interest to you guys, I'm sure I know that we briefly discussed that, but Simulation, learning, evaluation, assessment and Research Network. They have a fully simulated hospital called the SimVet Center in Orlando, florida, across the street from the Orlando VA Medical Center. And then Office of Advanced Manufacturing does focus on building what we can't buy, so focused on advanced manufacturing.
Deb Tauber:Jared, what were you going to ask? I wanted to get clear on how this is possible. Well, one.
Jerrod Jeffries:That's quite the difference between six institutions versus 150, you know, mid-hundreds that's one but two, and last time we were chatting as well, I remember we were talking about a few different cases, and one that really kind of struck my interest was that of the firearm safe handling. I was curious if we could go into some of the different modules or activities that users are able to be trained on within this virtual reality XR world.
Anne Bailey:Absolutely. And actually we kicked off this pilot, yes, over the last two days in New Orleans, so I got a lot of enthusiasm coming out right now about all of that. But so firearms safe handling one of the things we know about suicide prevention is the number one way to prevent suicide is lethal means safety and firearms safe handling is part of that. Now our veterans are very familiar with firearms and often have many, but our caregivers and staff their caregivers, our staff may or may not have familiarity with firearms and that terminology. Especially in a moment of crisis, that terminology really matters. So, as you can imagine, we can't force people to go to gun ranges or meet with police or handle weapons to learn that terminology or learn those techniques. So we have worked with the Veteran Crisis Line from our Office of Suicide Prevention. They have been the subject matter experts who have brought their curriculum for firearm safe handling and we've put that into a virtual reality experience. We now have six different firearms. There are some handguns and some long guns and in that experience you learn the terminology but you also walk through disarming, locking and safely storing weapons.
Anne Bailey:Va, as a suicide prevention effort, gives away gun locks very liberally the cable locks I had when I was seeing patients. I had a box of them next to me and you'd ask you know, veterans, how many guns do you have in your home? For? Ok, here's eight gun locks, just in case you have friends and you want to help them as well. And what we've learned with this experience is that one, people feel safe handling weapons in this environment. Two, it's realistic enough that, even though I reminded them and others as they're going through it, you're going to see a table in front of you in this virtual experience. But when you're done with the experience and it tells you to set the firearm down, there is no actual table in front of you. You are sitting in a chair, not at a table. People almost always drop the hand controller, so we make sure they have those safety straps on, showing how realistic it is. But the other thing is that people don't know how to use gun locks.
Deb Tauber:And so we've been able to show them that in this environment it's been really powerful, and I'm sure that's not something that somebody wants to say oh, I don't know how to lock up a gun, that's exactly right.
Anne Bailey:Oh sure, I'll take it. I'm sure I can figure this out, but that's right.
Deb Tauber:And how many veterans have been through this training at this point.
Anne Bailey:Yep. So this training is for our staff. We've been doing field testing, so we've been to seven medical centers until yesterday and we deployed it with 20 staff across 10 different medical centers and over the next three months each of those will have about 100 staff at their feedback on the actual experience. Is it realistic? Does the voice bother you? You know things like that that would impact people's acceptance of it or receptivity to it. And the other thing is we'll get pre and post information. How did, what did you know about guns before? What did you know after Similar questions, what we would ask if they were doing it in a 2D training environment? Because we do, as healthcare systems have computer-based training, but you can imagine how people just kind of click through those things and you don't necessarily even know what they say, and so we'll ask similar questions to see if we can get some data on how much more effective the training is.
Jerrod Jeffries:So I have a question when it comes back to when you get feedback, so say, and by all means it's 90 plus percent, kind of this NPS score or likability and kind of efficacy it seems but say for this you want to change something the voice or something's not scientifically correct or there's something that's maybe not completely kosher. What's the process of changing something within the module or the training, and how long does that take?
Anne Bailey:That's a good question. So one of the things that's important to know is that there are multiple different types of agreements we have with some of these companies. There's one which is you buy the thing off the shelf and nothing changes about it. You just put it out there into the wild and use it with patients. That is our least favorite, to be honest, because the technology is still young enough and early enough and our patients are still learning, and staff that we want to be able to say this worked and this didn't. And so the second is we purchased with terms in the contract that talk about adding new content or editing or adjusting or updating the content. Caitlin's worked on a really big project with that over the last two years now for chronic pain and suicide prevention, where we both got off the shelf content and developed content. Caitlin, you can talk about that as well. Then the other two are one, the firearm safe handling, which we've done this type of approach with two others as well.
Anne Bailey:Prevention of sexual harassment and an inpatient discharge experience, where we are actually writing scripts from a blank slate and funding the development from nothing into the actual experience, and to do that. It is part of the contracting process to repeatedly go to medical centers, get feedback and iterate on it. That's part of how the contract is written, and so we've developed it over each experience, from blank slate to completion and ready to deploy. It takes about a year, but it includes somewhere between generally about five to 10 visits to different medical centers to test it and try it, get feedback, iterate and test it again, and then the final one is the one that we use the most, and that's a cooperative research and development agreement.
Anne Bailey:Over the last seven years we have never been a consistently funded program. We take money from wherever we can get it from, and so have also relied heavily on the wonderful immersive community that's out there that is very agreeable to collaboration and co-design and co-development. And so through a cooperative research and development agreement, we're often co-designing, co-developing, prototyping, taking something and giving feedback on it. Under the terms of that type of agreement, where it's just mutual provisions of resources, you get to test it in an actual clinical, real-world environment. You get real veteran feedback or staff, depending on what your experience is and then they get the benefit to test something in that real-world environment. It's that mutual exchange of resources. But, caitlin, I'd love for you to talk more about your experience with some of this.
Caitlin Rollins:Yeah, I wanted to add to that conversation too about, especially with our cooperative research and development agreements, those collaborations, because they're so important. They keep our clinicians and the veterans at the center of what is being used in the VA, because in industry of course you can create these amazing things, these amazing products, amazing technology. But it doesn't mean that, even if you've got great research studies showing that it's valuable, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy to integrate into actual clinical care. You know you really need that real world experience. How does this product work in a real world setting? What are the issues with the process of integrating it into care? And so I think those collaborations are so incredibly important because they bring together healthcare and industry so that you can work together to build the best solution for healthcare that meets everybody's needs. And so it's incredibly important collaborative process.
Caitlin Rollins:And I think for that particular project that Anne mentioned that is intended for chronic pain and suicide prevention, it brought together kind of both of those worlds where you've got like the procurement of off the shelf product. But you're also doing the work of a CRADA in many ways, because you're building new content in direct collaboration and with feedback from both veterans and clinicians that are actually going to be using it in some way end users of that particular product. So that project took basic content that included things like 360 videos and mindfulness-based content, deep breathing exercises, sequential muscle relaxation type content and then added to it some very specific customized environments that were built with our actual like clinicians providing feedback on what the scripting was, what the details of the imagery look like. Every bit of those environments developed with actual clinicians to build new relaxation environments, new kind of complementary and integrative health type environments, as well as some novel in vivo exposure environments, which I think are incredibly important and increasing access to a difficult to provide therapy.
Deb Tauber:And how do you manage your resistant learners?
Caitlin Rollins:I think it's all about kind of support too.
Caitlin Rollins:We have our early adopters, the people that are excited from the very beginning about this technology, and they don't require a lot of coercion to pick up the devices to use them in whatever way they are intended, whether it's employee or veteran or caregiver facing.
Caitlin Rollins:But I think some of the hesitation usually lies in clinicians and other employees feeling like they don't have the bandwidth to learn something new. So whenever you're trying to integrate something new into healthcare, whether it's immersive technology or otherwise, you really need to make sure they feel supported. Make sure you think about and ask them for their opinion on what resources they need to make it easier for them to use. And I think that's where the VA Immersive and the VHA XR network have been so incredibly important in allowing this technology to scale is because it provides that support system. They have 2,000 plus employees across the country that can help answer their questions. They have our team that help develop national resources to make it easier for them to adopt the technology in whatever way they'd like to. So I think that's a big piece of it and, anne, maybe you have something else to add to that too.
Anne Bailey:I think one of the things that's really interesting and Caitlin touched on this a little bit is how you introduce people to the technology. That's why we talk a lot about heads and headsets, why we talk a lot about headsets and headsets and the fact that there are people it actually is very uncommon for us to encounter people who don't want to try it, and those who don't want to try it often are won over by seeing it screencasted so they can see what other people see, or by seeing people experience it. I had it happen yesterday. We had talked through a few different experiences outside of the firearms and I was talking with the group the 20 or so people who were there and telling them some of the other things that VA Immersive is doing with immersive technology and wanted them to experience things other than the one experience they were gonna be really focused on over the next several months. And we had some quick people who jumped up quickly and wanted to try it, people who are hesitant and then but then saw their, their colleagues, try it and enjoy the experience and then they tried it.
Anne Bailey:And so I think so much is how you introduce it, how you talk about it and even things that I think about, like when we talk about contraindications and precautions, potential side effects of cyber sickness from a pharmacist provider perspective, those lists are all significantly shorter than almost any medication that we would recommend for so many different indications, and once a patient takes a medication, I can't take that back right. We have to go through the course of whatever happens next and hope that it's great. But with this technology, if people were to experience cyber sickness, you'd take it all right. I mean, the risk is so low and helping people see that as well as the value, I think it really made a big difference for how it's grown across VA.
Deb Tauber:Now have you guys used it for narcotic reductions.
Caitlin Rollins:That was definitely one of the side effects, I suppose, of even that original project that I did in the Asheville VA, the very first project focusing on post-operative knee pain and anxiety associated with surgery. And of course then it spread to other orthopedic surgeries and then all surgeries and then of course to other inpatient units and to all over the hospital. But it started with just post-operative knee pain and that initial project ended up becoming one of the interventions that the facility was implementing as part of an overall enhanced recovery after surgery protocol, and that protocol was focused on increasing the amount of non-pharmacological interventions and non-opioid pain medications, kind of across the board for all surgeries. So as part of that program, that initial virtual reality piloting helped to decrease opioid use in those total knee arthroplasty patients by over 70% in less than three months, which was an incredible decrease in opioid use. And then, as it started rolling out to other surgeries, we started seeing decreases in opioid use across all of the different surgery types and even at this point, even years later, seven years later, there's still a sustained decrease in opioid use by over 30% across all of the surgeries at that facility, which is incredible.
Caitlin Rollins:Now, that being said, for some of our national pilots, like our at-home chronic pain management pilot that we've been doing. We're not necessarily tracking medication use associated with that, but the overall goal of a program like that is to provide a tool to those patients that they can use in their homes independently to help better self-manage their chronic pain. So if it's a patient that has historically been relying on opioids to help manage that chronic pain, we're trying to provide additional tools that will allow them to use something other than opioids in those scenarios. Because even as a nurse, and I and you've probably heard this as a pharmacist many of our patients that take opioids don't want to, but they feel like they're out of options and it's the one thing that can bring them some level of relief. So if we can provide something and immersive technology has the potential to allow them to not feel their pain for the first time in 10 years because they are distracted and learning skills that allow them to better manage their pain, and that's huge.
Deb Tauber:Caitlin, what are they seeing in this video when they're in this experience? What is actually showing up in the virtual reality headset? It looks like she's frozen, yeah.
Anne Bailey:I can tell you a little bit the products that we're using.
Caitlin Rollins:Oh, there she is you were frozen for a second Caitlin. Yeah, of course. So it definitely varies by product and by use case, but even in a single use case it can vary. So for pain management, for example, if it's for, Do you want me to fill in the gap, or?
Anne Bailey:wait till she's there?
Jerrod Jeffries:No, that'd be great.
Anne Bailey:Yeah, so it depends on the indication. For example, if you think about pain, which I think is what she was getting into acute pain is really about positive distraction. So then the question is, does the patient need something that's interactive for positive distraction or relaxing for positive distraction, and so that helps guide the selection For chronic pain? A lot of times it's skill development and learning experiences. So mindful practice, cognitive, behavioral therapy, pain, neuroscience, education, things like that, where you're creating experiences and going through experiences, for example, a breathing, you breathe and something grows right or something moves. So there's some interaction with your actual, with some biofeedback, but also with the experiences. Caitlin, you froze again, but if you want to add to that, go for it.
Jerrod Jeffries:Well, and I want to come back to one other question that I think Caitlin was touching upon, but you both addressed the question, and that has to do with the cooperation or working together with you guys' program. Could you let our listeners know how best to get together in terms of cooperation for you two? Are you the program you're working on?
Anne Bailey:Absolutely so. If it's just about learning more about what we're up to, innovationvagov is a website that has an immersive specific page on it, and there's lots of our stories and links and resources there. If you want to reach out to us, vaimmersivevagov is our email address and that goes to our entire team, so we'd love to hear from people Do you have a most like an exciting success story that you could share with us recently.
Jerrod Jeffries:Oh man, that's, that's a hard to pick one, right. Oh, that's a good problem to have and that is a good problem I will tell you.
Anne Bailey:Oh man, I even yesterday, and Jeff, I was telling you a little bit about this. We used to, you know, seeing this change over time. We used to do presentations and get a lot of questions at the end A lot of technical questions, definition questions, how to, what, if all these questions. Yesterday I did a usual presentation, got a couple of questions and then everybody everybody else that raised their hand wanted to tell a story of how they'd talked to a veteran at their medical center about how the technology was helping them. One woman said, yeah, I just go over into the inpatient unit and talk to the veterans that have used VR and hear how it's changed their lives. And you, like I know it sounds like I'm making this up, but I promise you that I am not.
Anne Bailey:We now publish these stories because they're exceptional.
Anne Bailey:One of my favorites was a story from Denver, va, where they had a patient who was homebound, who really needed to come to the medical center for his care, and he just was socially isolated chronic pain, debilitating PTSD, the whole thing, very complex comorbid conditions and they thought, well, we might as well send him a headset right Like, let's try this.
Anne Bailey:They are a phenomenal pain team that has a lot of different tools and things that they use with patients, so they send a headset. Not only does this patient now come in for his care, he has also signed up to be a peer specialist, which means he is being trained to one on one or in group settings, help other veterans who are isolated or homicidal, suicidal mental health challenges I mean a really complex job description. And because of this change now he's signed up to and that, to me, is ideal, right, like not only did it help him, but it brought him to a place to multiply who he was and help other people I think it was really powerful. There's a million other stories about patients that are, as they're actively passing away, asking for VR so that they can go to their home because they'd experienced it at different times through the hospice care journey. I mean, there's just so many. Caitlin, I know you have a million too, so I don't know if you can come up with one or two quickly.
Caitlin Rollins:I think some of them. You know one I already tried to describe earlier, where it's a patient with chronic pain. As you probably know, veterans experience chronic pain at a higher rate and a higher severity level than any other population, and so some of these patients literally have had no reprieve from their pain for decades, which is incredibly awful, you know, and we need to do more about it. But whenever I have a patient that you can put a VR headset on and their face just lights up all of a sudden because and you can just see them visibly relaxing you know patients that have been tense for decades all of a sudden just visibly relaxing and they'll tell you I don't feel my back anymore, I don't feel my leg anymore. This is the first time I've had relief from this pain in 20 years. You know that is huge, like that sort of story, and we see it over and over again. So it's not even just a single veteran story, it's really just multiple that you hear that from on a regular basis.
Caitlin Rollins:Anne's heard me tell this story every time we chat about veteran stories and Anne happened to be there and it was one of the first patients that we ever used virtual reality with. That actually has a cognitive impairment. So a lot of people would assume that if you have dementia, alzheimer's, that you can't really use the technology. Well, that's absolutely not true and it can be incredibly helpful for those patients to help decrease restlessness, agitation, to make them feel calmer, to take them back to a time maybe that they remember better.
Caitlin Rollins:But this was a patient who had a lot of behavioral health issues, was having to consistently be sent from our community living center, which is like a long-term care facility, to an inpatient psychiatric ward because of those mental health issues. And we put her in a virtual reality headset for the first time and this female veteran who's wheelchair bound, like all of a sudden her face went from her typical like kind of aggravated, like angry persona to somebody who was like laughing and smiling and she just changed into a completely, completely different person in front of our eyes. And so for a patient like that, who may often have to get antipsychotics or anxiolytics things to help with anxiety or those kinds of psychotic episodes that she's having, if you can put her in a headset and turn her into this happy person who's spinning circles in her wheelchair, that's amazing.
Deb Tauber:Wow, anything that you guys want to add for our listeners. Any final closing thoughts?
Anne Bailey:I would say lean in. You know, we've seen this change exponentially over the last seven years and certainly feel like we are have not even reached the peak yet of potential, and our ultimate goal is just to normalize it. Right, we don't want this to be the flavor of the week or the trend of the whatever we believe, and we are moving forward in such, and this is both in patient care and staff training and education, as well as employee well-being. Right, it's not just about training and educating our staff, but it's also helping them take a break and deescalate some of the situations they find themselves on a day-to-day basis. But our goal is for this to be a new modality that is very normal in healthcare and we look forward to seeing that continue to grow and change over the next several years.
Caitlin Rollins:And I think I would probably va. gov just say hear, hear to that.
Deb Tauber:Yeah, this is some great work you guys are doing. You need to keep it up and you need to spread the word, and hopefully our listeners will be. If they have questions for you guys, is there a way they can get to you?
Anne Bailey:yeah, that va immersive a is the best place to reach out there. We're also pretty easy to find on linkedin, if that's a better place for listeners also. Um, deb and j, thank you so much for allowing us to join you and have this conversation. Things like this and people like you are really the front end of all of this and making it happen, because if you guys don't help us tell the story, then it never gets told. So, thank you, we definitely could not do this without you guys.
Jerrod Jeffries:Thank you and Caitlin, I'm impressed with this scrappiness, this hustle that you guys have and you and you just keep calling and keep getting different types of funding. You keep cooperating. It's, you know, throwing it right back at you. It's people like you that kind of cooperate and collaborate and and help you, help so many people. So it's it's coming from different angles and putting these different types of disciplines together to to create change and something better for all veterans. And then it only starts there. It just keeps pushing forward.
Deb Tauber:we will conclude, and thank you so much for being guests. We really appreciate it.
Anne Bailey:Thank you.
DIsclaimer/ Innvovative SIm Solutuions Ad/ Intro:Thanks to Innovative Sim Solutions for sponsoring this week's podcast. Thank you so much for being guests. We really appreciate it. Thank you Thanks to Innovative Sim Solutions for sponsoring this week's podcast. Innovative Sim Solutions will make your plans for your next Sim Center a reality. Contact Deb Tauber and her team today. Thanks for joining us here at the Sim Cafe. We hope you enjoyed Visit us at www. innovativesimsolutions. com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Innovative Sim Solutions is your one-stop shop for your simulation needs, a turnkey solution.
