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The WOW Project (WOW): Wonders Of The World Through Virtual Reality for Hospitalized Children

Immersive Bedside Teaching for Hospitalized Pediatric Patient - A Prospective, Mixed-method, Cohort Study

Status
Recruiting
Phases
NA
Study type
Interventional
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT06911996
Acronym
WOW
Enrollment
100
Registered
2025-04-04
Start date
2025-07-10
Completion date
2026-08-31
Last updated
2025-10-20

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Virtual Reality

Keywords

Immersive Learning

Brief summary

Hospitalized pediatric patients are unable to leave the hospital to engage in traditional learning environments. Patients often feel depressed, disconnected from learning, and socially withdrawn. The Stanford Chariot Program proposes a partnership with the Palo Alto Unified Hospital School at Stanford Children's Health to reignite patients' emotional well-being through learning. The WOW Project aims to use virtual reality (VR) to travel with hospitalized children to the Wonders of the World (WOW). Combining this immersive learning modality with complementary hands-on activities at the bedside, the investigators will transport them from their hospital room into a nurturing virtual environment to stimulate their emotional, mental, and social growth while they are physically healing. The investigators will evaluate their overall joy and awe of learning by using standardized emotional scales.

Interventions

BEHAVIORALVirtual Reality

After obtaining written consent, participants will be asked to complete a brief demographic survey and pre-intervention surveys (content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). They will then be equipped with a VR headset, Quest 3 (Meta, Inc., Menlo Park, CA) displaying the educational field trip. After the VR field trip, participants will participate in a complementary hands-on science experiment. At the conclusion of the experiment, patients will be asked to complete the post intervention surveys (i.e awe, content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). Additionally, for the first 20 participants, 15 participants will be randomly selected and asked to participate in a 5 open-ended question qualitative interview regarding engagement of the lesson. Audio will be recorded via zoom.

Sponsors

Stanford University
Lead SponsorOTHER

Study design

Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
5 Years to 17 Years
Healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

* Between the age of 5 and 17. * English speaking. * Anticipated in-patient stay for more than 1 day.

Exclusion criteria

* Legal guardian not present to obtain consent * Child with a significant neurological condition, or major developmental disability * Child with active infection of the face or hand * A history of severe motion sickness * A history of seizures caused by flashing light * Major surgery within the last 12 hours

Design outcomes

Primary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Assess the impact of VR-based field trips on the feeling of awe of the pediatric inpatient populationimmediately after interventionThe primary outcome will be AWE measured by the AWE-SF Survey - The Awe Experience Short Form Scale. The survey contains 12 items about awe experience. Each item was rated on a 7-point scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree).

Secondary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Change in the number of correct answers of the content knowledgeDay 1 baseline, Day 1 immediately after interventionChange in number of correct answers of the content knowledge using Bloom's Taxonomy questioning. Participants will respond to 5 questions, two questions about comprehension, one question about application, one question about analysis and one question about evaluation. Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the higher number of correct answer.
Change in a patients' well-being as measured through the World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5)Day 1 baseline, Day 1 immediately after interventionThe WHO (Five) Well-Being Index is a participant-reported outcome measure that assesses current mental well being. Questionnaire contains 5 questions . Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the corresponding feeling exists all the time.
Thematic analysis of the qualitative surveys including how the lesson engagement correlates to the increase in joyful learning.immediately after interventionAnalysis of data collected via qualitative surveys, using saturation sampling and documented coding techniques, will result in thematic descriptions how the lesson engagement correlates to the increase in joyful learning.

Countries

United States

Contacts

Primary ContactThomas Caruso, MD, PhD
tjcaruso@stanford.edu6504970927
Backup ContactAstrid Suen, MMedSc
smy822@stanford.edu6504970927

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026