Vırtual Realıty Glasses' Traumatıc Bırth Perceptıon and Bırth Preferences

The Effect of the Bırth Process Watched to Nursıng Students Through Vırtual Realıty Glasses on the Students' Perceptıon of Traumatıc Bırth and Bırth Preferences

Birth is an irreplaceable experience in an individual's life, and can have critical health consequences for both the mother and the baby. Healthcare professionals, especially nurses, play an important role in the management, support and education of this process. Nursing students' knowledge and experience about labor is an important factor that affects both their professional development and future patient care.

Traditional education methods may have limited impact on healthcare professionals in learning about the birth process. Instead, the use of virtual reality (VR) technology offers students the opportunity to experience the birth process realistically. In a virtual reality environment, nursing students can understand the physiological stages of birth, its effects on the mother and baby, and the emotional aspects of the birth process more deeply. This has the potential to change traumatic perceptions of the birth process, and can also have an impact on birth preferences.

The perception of traumatic birth is shaped by individuals' negative thoughts and feelings about their birth experiences. These perceptions emerge as an important factor affecting future birth preferences and health care application status beyond the birth process. During nursing education, shaping these perceptions of students and providing them with positive experiences is of critical importance. Experiencing labor with virtual reality can reduce students' negative perceptions of birth and help them make more conscious choices about birth options.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: NURSING STUDENTS
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: VIRTUAL REALITY GLASSES

Detailed Description

Birth is a natural and enjoyable process that includes surprises that do not go well. While nurses usually witness positive and uplifting births, they also encounter traumatic and upsetting events. Especially when faced with difficult births, this situation can have an intense psychological impact and a perception of traumatic birth can occur. Student nurses who provide care in delivery rooms during their training feel empathic feelings towards their fellow women when they encounter a traumatic event during birth and as a result, they become vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress. This situation can put students under a heavy psychological burden and increase their perception of traumatic birth . The perception of birth is the most important factor that causes a woman to have a wonderful experience or a negative birth story that she will remember for the rest of her life. Women's negative perception of birth causes an increase in the rates of interventional birth (oxytocin use, episiotomy and amniotomy practices) and elective cesarean section, and negatively affects birth preference and type, postpartum satisfaction, postpartum emotional process, family relationship and mother-baby bonding. The education process of nursing students is an important opportunity to change their existing negative perceptions of birth, increase their awareness of the issue and implement initiatives aimed at these. It is thought that nurses with a positive perception of birth will make more effective interventions in terms of reducing and encouraging the fears of the pregnant woman at every stage of birth. The ultimate goal of nursing education is to encourage the application of theoretical knowledge in clinical practice. However, limited clinical practice time affects students' opportunity to gain clinical experience with real patients. Due to the rapid development of information technology and the inadequacy of the nursing workforce, a transformation is needed in nursing education to prepare nursing students for evolving and complex healthcare environments. Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated three-dimensional graphical representation of a natural or imaginary environment into which users are immersed through a special headset or a series of screen walls. In general, VR can be a promising technology for enhancing learning through experiential learning . Educators in the field of women's health nursing face various challenges when trying to provide the best learning experience for students. Students are only in the role of observers rather than an active nursing role during the labor and delivery process. Accordingly, it is thought that the births they observe may affect their thoughts about birth . In this context, our study aimed to determine the effect of the labor process that nursing students watched through virtual reality glasses on the students' perception of traumatic birth and birth preferences.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 109
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Turkey
  • Elazığ, Turkey, 23100
    • NURDİLAN

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Being a woman
• Having taken a gynecology course

Exclusion Criteria:

• Having witnessed any labor before,
• Having any psychiatric diagnosis,
• Having any neurological disease (such as epilepsy) that will cause seizures,
• Having any diagnosis that causes dizziness in the patient, such as vertigo.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: experimental; Before the lesson, students will watch a video of the actual birth. The video is available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRjOO6V83Uw) and was edited and voiced by the researcher to its final form. The video includes observations starting before birth, the birth itself and the early postpartum period.	Other: VIRTUAL REALITY GLASSES; There will be a video screening
No Intervention: control; No intervention will be made

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
traumatic perception of birth	It is thought that showing the birth process to nursing students through virtual reality will reduce the score they will receive on the traumatic birth perception scale and reduce the perception of traumatic birth.	1 month
Birth preferences	It is thought that by showing the birth process to nursing students in virtual reality, birth preferences will change and the rate of cesarean births will decrease.	1 month

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Firat University
• Collaborators: Inonu University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 30, 2024
• Primary Completion (Actual): January 10, 2025
• Study Completion (Actual): January 20, 2025

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 20, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 30, 2025
• First Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 30, 2025
• Last Verified: January 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: virtual reality glasses; birth preferences.; perception of traumatic birth
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Wounds and Injuries; Infant, Newborn, Diseases; Birth Injuries
• Other Study ID Numbers: fıratuniversty

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No