Virtual reality headsets have spread quickly through pediatric care as a way to get children through needles. A records review from a Chinese teaching hospital compared that technology against a much older intervention, a trained adult in a red nose, and the headset trailed on every measure taken during the procedure.
Nurse researchers at Anhui Medical University reviewed the charts of 220 children aged 3 to 6 who had blood drawn between January 2022 and January 2025 at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University. Half had received clown care during the procedure and half had used a virtual reality device. The results appeared this year in Frontiers in Medicine.
