A large black blob appears in the center of your field of vision, making it hard to eat or even see the birthday cake your daughter has placed in front of you. The voices of your loved ones are muffled and hard to make out. The isolation you feel is palpable.
That’s what it’s like to be “Alfred,” a 74-year-old man with macular degeneration and hearing loss at the center of a new virtual reality (VR) lab led by Jaime Hannans, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing at
California State University Channel Islands.
“When I first experienced virtual reality myself, I thought,
This is it. This is how students can learn what it’s like from the patient’s perspective,” says Hannans, whose advancements in nursing and commitment to student success were recently recognized by the CSU Office of the Chancellor with a
Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award.
“With VR, nursing students can embody the patient virtually and
feel their frustration.”
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Finding Her Calling
Dr. Hannans came to CSU Channel Islands in 2009, but the California State University has nearly always been part of her life.
Her aunt worked at Humboldt State University for nearly three decades as a professor and then chair of nursing, and Hannans visited the CSU’s northernmost campus often as a little girl. “I loved going to the bookstore on campus,” she recalls. “From the beginning, the CSU was ingrained in my life.”
As an undergraduate, she attended Chico State with dreams of working in sports medicine. But after a friend broke his neck in a snowboarding accident and Hannans’s sister broke her back just four months later while serving in the Air Force, her career path took a turn.
“All of their care was dependent on the nurses they had,” she says. “It empowered me to feel like nursing was the right way to go,” Hannans says.
“[Nurses] are the ones who are there throughout the day to help patients when they have an emotional moment or to administer basic care needs. The nurse is the constant and such a key role in providing effective and safe care.”