In August we wrote about Snoezelen room or virtual reality, with institutions that have neither in mind. The conclusion already pointed here: many end up using both.
In a recent meeting, the question arrived the other way round. The institution already has the room and a team used to running it, and wants to know whether virtual reality goes inside or stays at the door. It goes inside, and there is a way to do it that respects what the room already does well.
Where the Snoezelen room comes from
The concept was born in the Netherlands in the late 1970s, with Jan Hulsegge and Ad Verheul, at a centre for people with intellectual disabilities. The name joins two Dutch words: snuffelen, to explore, and doezelen, to doze. The idea was a space with no performance goal, where a person explores and settles at their own pace, always accompanied.
Over the years the room moved into care homes, day centres and long-term care units. The principle stayed the same: controlled light, sound, texture and smell, and someone alongside.
What the room gives a virtual reality session
A virtual reality session asks for almost the same conditions a Snoezelen room already offers:
- A calm place. Low light, few people passing, no bells halfway through. The person is not interrupted.
- A routine. People who use the room already know it is where you take a pause. The headset joins a routine that exists instead of creating a new one.
- A comfortable seat. Sessions happen seated, and these rooms usually have the best armchairs in the building.
- A team that accompanies without hurry. Whoever runs the room already knows how to watch the person and stop when needed. That is exactly what a headset session asks for.
What the headset adds to the room
The room has light, sound and texture. It does not have places. A beach, the village where the person grew up, the shrine at Fátima: that is what virtual reality brings into the room.
It brings two more things the room does not have:
- It changes environment without building work. Today's scene does not have to be tomorrow's.
- It can keep a record. If the institution wants, what was done, with whom and for how long is written down.
The headset is not tied to the room. Anyone who cannot get there, because they are bedbound or do not leave their room, can still have the session where they are.
How to set it up
- A corner, not the whole room. An armchair away from the bubble tubes and hanging objects, so the person can turn their head freely.
- Turn the room's sound down. The headset has its own ambient sound. Two soundscapes at once confuse more than they calm.
- Low light, not dark. The person in the headset cannot see the room; whoever accompanies them needs to see the person.
- One stimulus at a time. No headset on top of a vibrating chair or a water bed. If the person reacts, the team needs to know to what.
- The room is for arriving and leaving. A few minutes in the room before putting the headset on, and a few after taking it off. Coming back from a scene into a softly lit room is different from coming back into a corridor.
- One person in the headset, the others in the room. Virtual reality is individual. While one person is in the scene, the others carry on with the rest of the room, and the team follows the session on a phone or tablet.
Where it does not work
- People who tolerate nothing on their head. For them, the room stays, and that is fine.
- Group sessions. The room can be shared, the headset cannot. If the room is mostly used in groups, the headset fits before or after, not during.
- A room that is always busy. If there is already a queue for the room, putting the headset there only lengthens it. In that case the headset is worth more wherever the person is.
Neither is a treatment. Both are environments for comfort and stimulation, used under the supervision of carers. They do not replace clinical assessment or any prescribed therapy, and decisions about the care plan always belong to the team.
RVer is a virtual reality system for clinical use designed for healthcare settings, whose base product is registered as a Class I Medical Device with Infarmed (CDM 94571546) and carries CE marking under MDR 2017/745. The RVer Motion, RVer Neuro and RVer Exposure modules are in development and are not covered by that registration.
On fitting sessions into the week, see an activity plan for a care home. On who can use the headset, see accessibility in virtual reality.