Argumentative Essay On Virtual Real Pain

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Pain is highly un desirable, but without it, there would be no way of knowing “something has gone wrong” (Myers 261), which has the potential to lead to even greater suffering. Many ways to control pain exist; however, the vast majority of them require the use of opiates such as morphine. The downside to using drugs as analgesia’s is the potential negatives side effects. An alternative option is the virtual-reality pain control, an analgesia with no known negative side effects. Distraction is an effective form of pain control as it pulls a patients focus to something other than the pain that a patient is experiencing, lessening the effects of pain itself. Pain is felt primarily in the brain, so if the brain is preoccupied with other things, it will not be able to experience pain to the same extent. A common example of this is when a child goes to a doctor’s office to get a vaccination. The nurse is likely to draw the child’s attention to another object and carry a conversation unrelated to the situation they are currently experiencing. While the child is not expecting it, the nurse will then give them the shot. …show more content…

An immersive virtual-reality system relies on drawing the patient’s attention into a virtual world. It is similar to video games, but has proven to be much more effective as it allows the participant to be fully occupied with the 3-D world, and interact with the environment around them. It includes “a helmet or head-mounted display that delivers high-resolution, 3D sights and sounds, head- and/or limb-tracking hardware, and specialized software to render an interactive virtual environment” (Sharar et al). Rather than acting directly on receptors in the nervous system, virtual-reality modifies the awareness of pain. It draws the patient’s concentration away from the painful experience and towards the pleasant virtual experience. This form of treatment is mainly used for relief in burn

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