November 2020 — CHRU de Nancy.
Dr. Julien Sitte initiates and develops one of the first structured programmes of colonoscopy under hypnorelaxation and therapeutic virtual reality in France.
The backdrop is the Covid-19 crisis: operating rooms are saturated, anaesthetists redeployed to intensive care, and thousands of patients are waiting for an endoscopic examination that normally requires general anaesthesia.
Faced with this constraint, Dr. Sitte does not merely adjust the schedule. He envisions a new patient journey.
The programme combines conversational hypnosis provided by a specially trained nurse and a therapeutic virtual reality setup that lets the patient immerse themselves in an environment of their choice — Zen garden, scuba diving, forest, mountain — for the entire duration of the examination.
The Nancy teaching hospital thus becomes one of only two French university hospitals to offer this approach. The programme is quickly integrated into the department's routine clinical practice and receives national media coverage.
Since then, the technique has remained a success at the teaching hospital: still practised today, it continues to attract a growing number of patients.