2026 Volume 23 Issue 1 Pages 9-18
Objective: The use of virtual reality (VR) has expanded in clinical practice, including palliative care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, visitation restrictions intensified separation between patients and their families. This qualitative descriptive study explored healthcare professionals’ experiences providing VR-based care to terminally ill patients in a palliative care unit.
Design: This qualitative descriptive study used the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA).
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five healthcare professionals. Data were analyzed using the Trajectory Equifinality Model to identify key pathways, passage points, bifurcation points, and social influences.
Results: The experiences of physicians and nurses involved in VR-based care ollowed a five-phase trajectory: introducing VR with both doubt and hope, responding to patients’ and families’ diverse reactions, struggling implementation difficulties, examining whether VR could meet patients’ needs, and ultimately reaffirming a fundamental wish to help patients return home.
Conclusion: Physicians tended to focus on identifying family needs and seeking care approaches and technologies aligned with those needs. Nurses who directly provided the intervention experienced ethical conflict regarding care and support for patients and their families. In addition, nurses who assisted with the intervention became more proactive in supporting patients and their families, reflecting changes in both their perception and actions.
VR-based care functioned as an alternative means of communication and connection. Future use of VR in end-of-life care will require careful attention to ethical challenges, particularly when the intervention may evoke new forms of distress, as well as collaboration with palliative care specialists and communication or media professionals.
