Exploring the perceptions of former ICU patients and clinical staff on barriers and facilitators to the implementation of virtual reality exposure therapy

Intensive care saves lives, and can leave psychological scars. Many former ICU patients live with anxiety, intrusive memories and post-traumatic stress long after discharge, and graduated exposure therapy is an established way to address them. Delivering it in a form patients accept, and clinical teams can run, is the hard part.

This qualitative study, published in Nursing in Critical Care (volume 29, issue 2, pages 313–324) with a DancingMind co-author, explored how former ICU patients and clinical staff perceive virtual-reality exposure therapy: the barriers that stand in the way of implementing it in practice, and the facilitators that would help it succeed.

Implementation research like this shapes how our graduated exposure programmes are co-designed with patients and clinical teams: therapy has to be acceptable to the people receiving it and practical for the teams delivering it, not just clinically sound.