The Effect of Using Virtual Reality Glasses on Pain During Fistula Cannulation in Hemodialysis Patients

The research was carried out with patients in the hemodialysis unit of a private hospital in Istanbul, between September and November 2022.The study had a pre-test post-test design and was a single-center, parallel-design, randomized controlled experimental study. Priori Power Analysis was performed to determine the sample size and Cohen's standard effect size reference method was chosen accordingly. Considering 85% power, 0.005 significance level, and 0.8 effect size for the study, the minimum required sample size was calculated as 23 for each group. Since it was thought that there might be data loss, it was decided to include 28 patients in each group and 56 patients in total. Computer-assisted simple randomization (https://www.randomizer.org/) was used to determine the groups. There wasn't any blocking in this simple randomization. There wasn't any blinding for the patients or the researchers throughout the study. Pain assessments were made by the service nurses, and virtual reality glasses were applied by the researcher. The data were collected by one researcher and the analysis and evaluations were made by the other researcher. Thus, blanking was used during data collection and analysis. The population of the study consists of patients (n=82) in the hemodialysis unit of a private hospital in Istanbul, and the sample consists of patients who meet the research criteria and agree to participate in the study (n=47). In data collection; Introductory Information Form and Visual Analog Scale (Visual Comparison Scale) (VAS) were used. Virtual reality glasses: Bobo VR Z4 brand virtual reality glasses with 5.7 inch 1440x2560 pixel screen resolution and JBL brand wireless headset were used. In this study, it is planned to analyze the data in SPSS program. Normality tests, mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, number-percentage distributions in data analysis; Independent Groups t-test, Mann Whitney U test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Kruskal-Wallis test will be used. Differences between groups in terms of categorical variables will be examined with the chi-square test. Pearson correlation analysis will be used to examine the relationships between variables, and Cohen-d effect size will be used to determine the effect size.