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What’s it like to die? This VR experience puts doctors in a dying man’s shoes

Virtual reality may be able to transport you to spectacular other worlds, but a large part of its promise is the ability to also put you into the shoes of other people. In doing so, the hope is that VR could help make us more empathetic, since it gives us the ability to literally experience life from another person’s perspective.

That’s what VR studio Embodied Labs hopes to do. Based in Los Angeles — arguably the entertainment capital of the world — Embodied Labs wants to use cutting edge virtual reality to do something more than provide escapism. It wants to use it to promote empathy. And it wants to do it in such a way that can help train tomorrow’s caregivers.

We’ve previously covered Embodied Labs’ work creating a virtual experience intended to simulate the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Called “The Beatriz Lab: A Journey Through Alzheimer’s Disease,” it follow the fictitious character Beatriz, a math teacher in her 60s, as she grapples with the neurodegenerative disease. Now Embodied Labs is back with another virtual training tool, this time designed to function as an end-of-life simulation for educating staff and medical students in hospices, hospitals, and universities. It’s currently being used at the Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough, Maine, as well as by medical students at the University of New England.

Meet Clay

The 30-minute simulation places users in the role of “Clay,” a 66-year-old lung cancer patient in need of hospice care. During the course of the VR story, Clay has important conversations with family, suffers a fall that puts him in the E.R., and eventually winds up in hospice care. Through simulating physical changes in virtual reality — such as how Clay’s skin alters and his senses dull — the user also gets to feel some approximation of what it would be like to experience end-stage cancer. By the end of the experience, Clay’s eyesight becomes dim as his life comes to a close. For anyone who associates VR predominantly with gaming, the effect is surprisingly poignant.

Embodied Labs

“The embodied experience includes receiving a terminal diagnosis from your oncologist, counseling from your case manager, and care from your hospice provider and family, and ultimately, it involves reaching the end of your life,” Erin Washington, co-founder and COO at Embodied Labs, told Digital Trends. “By embodying Clay, people gain insights into challenges faced by patients and families when curative treatment is not available, learn how hospice care supports loved ones, and explore the physical, spiritual, and mental changes that may occur at end of life.”

Embodied Labs provides an experience that caregivers or clinicians cannot get simply by reading textbooks.

Through its painstakingly created and very human VR experiences, the company has cornered the market on a type of next-generation training tool. It provides an experience that caregivers or clinicians cannot get simply by reading textbooks.

“Embodied Labs creates immersive training and wellness tools for healthcare students, and for professional and family caregivers, so they can feel more empowered and confident in having the difficult conversations that surround end-of-life decisions,” Washington continued. “Organizations such as skilled nursing facilities, medical schools, hospice and home care agencies, and assisted-living providers use Embodied Labs to improve outcomes, operations, and culture.”

In addition to creating its experiences, Embodied Labs creates customized assessment questions to be answered before and after staff and students sample a VR scenario. This qualitative and quantitative data can then be used to provide new insights, on the part of professionals, into things such as how conversations about end-of-life are carried out.

Building empathy

But does this actually work, or is this a case of creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist? In fact, according to a new piece of research, virtual reality really be prove to be a useful tool in encouraging empathy.

In a study published this month in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, researchers from Stanford University compared the attitudes of people who had read a first-person narrative piece of writing about homelessness, those who had experienced a 2D interactive narrative about it on computer, and those who had undergone a perspective-taking VR scenario on the same topic. They found that the people who had experienced the VR simulation were more likely to sign a petition to support homeless populations. Follow-up surveys also found that they experienced longer-lasting empathetic feelings than those who had done the narrative-reading task.

Attempts to “gamify” complex scenarios risk inadvertently diminishing them.

Of course, there are problematic aspects with the idea of building empathy through VR. A 30-minute simulation about end-of-life conversations is not the same thing as experiencing it for real. A person really experiencing the effects of homelessness or discriminatory activity cannot simply take off their headset when they decide they’ve had enough of their life circumstances. Attempts to “gamify” complex scenarios risk inadvertently diminishing them, and carry the chance of turning something intended for good into something exploitative.

However, properly considered, there is room for virtual reality as a teaching tool. Certainly, it needs the proper care and attention of trained professionals, and it shouldn’t be considered a substitute for other forms of teaching. But as something that we’re glad to see being explored? Absolutely. And if it potentially means more empathetic treatment for yourself and your fellow human beings, you should be, too.

Freda Salvador Power Shoes Now Have A Home In New York

Cristina Palomo Nelson and Megan Papay, founders of Freda Salvador footwearKat Harris

Since Cristina Palomo Nelson and Megan Papay launched Frēda Salvador footwear in 2012, the brand has been a go-to for independent-minded women who demand a quality, beautiful, walkable shoe. So it's only right that the brand finally has its own retail store in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood.

Freda Salvador NYCKat Harris

The shop is in good company with Love Adorned, L'Appartement (Sezane), and Thomas Sires just steps away, plus all the glories of SOHO shopping and dining all within walking distance.

It is brick and mortar location number three (four if you count the first location in San Francisco's Cow Hollow, which is now relocated to Fillmore Street) for Freda Salvador. Nelson and Papay enlisted COMO Interior Design to create the Manhattan space. The result is a thoughtfully eclectic shop that highlights the brand's signatures booties, d'Orsay oxfords and leopard-patterned shoes and boots. 

Freda Salvador NYC by COMO IDKat Harris

The San Francisco brand initially launched in 2012 with online sales and a San Francisco retail location, then opened its L.A. outpost in Culver City's Platform Center in 2016. The brand's growing roster of celebrity fans includes Tegan & Sara, Krysten Ritter, Jessica Chastain, Courtney Love and Emma Roberts. 

Freda Salvador d'Orsay oxfordKat Harris

Check out Freda Salvador's new arrivals, including the combat-style, shearling-lined Hike as well as the also-shearling-lined Keen mule, perfect for the incoming New York winter.

Freda Salvador NolitaKat Harris

If dogs wore shoes, these would be some big ones to fill

Meet Nadia and Angel, who are the rookies stepping up to the job behind new retirees Alpha and Ringo. Therese Apel, Clarion Ledger

Narcotics Detective Anthony Fox and his K-9 Nadia.(Photo: Therese Apel / Clarion Ledger)

In front of the "Welcome to Jackson" sign at the corner of Pearl and State streets Tuesday, Jackson welcomed its newest police recruits: K-9 officers Nadia and Angel. 

The two rookie K-9s are taking the torch from veteran K-9s Alpha and Ringo. Their primary function, Jackson Police Department Chief James Davis said, is to sniff out drugs, but they will also be used for search and rescue and tracking when necessary. 

Nadia has already gotten her start working with Detective Anthony Fox. Recently, she sniffed out a load of marijuana that was hidden in a tree. According to a Facebook post from Southern State Canine, she found the drugs crammed down in the fork of a tree.

"She gave me the alert of an odor she was smelling," Fox said. "We were able to recover several ounces of high-grade marijuana that she just took me to on her own."

Angel and her handler, Detective Desmond Barney, are learning together. They've been living together for a little less than a month, Barney said, and as he learns the ropes of being a handler, Angel is learning the ropes of being a drug dog. 

"It's a learning experience. She's learning from me and I'm learning from her, and we're going to see how we work out together," Barney said. "I'm enjoying it so far."

Davis said that as the city continues to bring new personnel into the police department and the narcotics unit, he hopes to expand the K-9 unit as well.

Alpha and Ringo will now go home to "be a dog," Fox said. Ringo will retire to live with his handler, Detective Carl Ellis, and Alpha will live with Fox.

"They served the city very well," Fox said. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars, uncountable seizures with narcotics. They can be a dog now."

But Alpha hasn't forgotten his glory days.

"This morning when I put the leash on, he took off like he was looking for dope again. I think he misses it," Fox said.

K-9 Ringo prepares for retirement from the Jackson Police Department. He was honored at a ceremony on Oct. 23. (Photo: Therese Apel / Clarion Ledger)

K-9 Alpha retired from Jackson Police Department at age 10. He was honored in a ceremony October 23. (Photo: Therese Apel / Clarion Ledger)

K-9 Angel prepares for duty at the Jackson Police Department (Photo: Therese Apel / Clarion Ledger)

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