PhD opportunity in VR for pain management
The University Alliance Doctoral Training programme is offering over 83 PhD Fellowship in three themes (applied biosciences for health, energy and social policy) across a consortium of 15 universities in the UK.
This project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska Curie grant, is an unique opportunity to be part of a global network on an employer co-designed training programme with extensive connections to industry and commerce.
In fact, the Doctoral Training alliance (DTA3) is the largest multi-partner and only nationwide doctoral training in the UK. It offers PhD students a fully-funded postgraduate programme, an expert support network and improved employment opportunities. The training will produce independent, highly-employable researchers with expertise and skills in strategically-important research areas.
The effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR) for management of pain
Teesside University (School of Health and Social Care) is offering the PhD Fellowship “The effectiveness of Virtual Reality for management of pain”.
Virtual Reality (VR) can reduce acute pain by distracting attention away from the pain while people play the games. Chronic pain is different than acute pain and is much more difficult to reduce – for example, drugs that work for acute pain do not work well for chronic pain. But people with chronic pain do use distraction to make their pain more bearable. Therefore, they may find VR useful but that has not been scientifically proven yet. This project will see whether or not VR can help people make their chronic pain more bearable.
The project will have three stages. In stage 1, the existing scientific studies on VR for pain will be closely examined to choose types of VR that might work best. In stage 2, some of the best available types of VR will be compared in a fair trial to see which produces the most relief in people with chronic pain. In stage 3, the best one of these will be given to people with chronic pain for a number of weeks. They will then describe how they used the VR and they will explain how they think it could be used to help others.
Application
All applications should be received by 23:59 (UK time) on Monday 8 October 2018.
Interviews will commence during the week starting Monday 26 November 2018.
For more information, details of recruiting projects and how to apply, see https://unialliance.ac.uk/dta/cofund/