Virtual Reality Health Education to Prevent Musculoskeletal Disorders and Chronic Low Back Pain in Formal and Informal Caregivers.

Abstract

Formal and informal caregivers are suffering from musculoskeletal disorders and low back pain which develops in practice. Previous research has suggested that health education can help to prevent musculoskeletal disorders and low back pain in caregivers. With the ability to simulate real-world scenarios, healthcare education is experiencing rapid growth in the use of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality, aiming to enhance lifelong learning for caregivers, with promising results. However, the creation of such technologies has not been well documented, which forces educators to face the same setbacks during this development process. Using a user-centred design approach, which involved 14 medical experts and computer scientists, we designed a mobile Virtual Reality application to enhance learning and reduce work attributions for caregivers. Then we evaluated the system with a total of 30 formal and informal caregivers, documenting that Virtual Reality can be an effective solution for lifelong learning. Through this paper, we explain the process and analysis we run to identify how to create an effective Virtual Reality learning system.