Addressing social isolation and cognitive decline in care homes with virtual reality: Challenges and early benefits in Germany and Czechia
M. Hasa
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AbstractThe immersivity and versatility of virtual reality (VR) offers vast potential for providing older adults in care homes with stimuli from the outside world, thus helping them to maintain their physical, psychological, and cognitive health. However, similarly to many assistive technologies and other digital innovations in the senior care sector, the adoption rate of VR-based tools remains rather low. The purpose of this paper presentation is to shed more light on the benefits of such applications as experienced by care staff and older adults themselves, as well as on the barriers preventing large scale integration of VR in care home routines. Research preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, which only boosted the widespread issue of social isolation in nursing homes, delivered promising evidence of the numerous benefits VR content may bring to the ageing population. An RCT in Korea (Thapa et al., 2020) supported the potential of virtual experiences in decelerating or stopping cognitive decline which was in line with the finding of D’Cunha et al. (2019) that VR content may strengthen overall mental wellness in the long term. Other studies highlighted that to produce positive health outcomes (especially in the case of older adults with dementia), VR content must be tailored to their specific needs, ideally by being only semi-interactive (Kim, Pang, & Kim, 2019) and providing 360-degree film-based sceneries instead of truly virtual environments (Appel et al., 2020). The great majority of such research-based insights comes from non-European countries, hence the aim of this paper to explore the acceptability and effectiveness of virtual experiences as a tool for occupational therapy and cognitive training in Czech and German social care practice. Additionally, this paper strived to contribute to both research and practical advancements by investigating the usability of VR by caregivers who function as gatekeepers of such assistive technologies and play a vital role in the process of capitalizing on the potential of VR for senior care home clients.Keywords: virtual reality, cognitive training, occupational therapy, institutionalized care, care homes, usability, acceptability
M. Hasa (2024). Addressing social isolation and cognitive decline in care homes with virtual reality: Challenges and early benefits in Germany and Czechia. Gerontechnology, 23(2), 1-1
https://doi.org/10.4017/gt.2024.23.s.942.opp