Pain is a multidimensional and active process. It involves attentional, sensory, cognitive, emotional, and motivational systems. To better control pain and anxiety in children at the hospital, new techniques need to be developed outside of the range of pharmaceuticals. Virtual reality is a very promising tool to use as an optimal distractor during painful and anxiety-inducing medical procedures. In this thesis, the effectiveness of VR interventions at diminishing pain and anxiety in children during a venepuncture was investigated. Two VR games were compared to a standard of care condition and results demonstrated that VR interventions did lower pain and anxiety better than the standard of care. More specifically, VR games either diminished the amount of time the child was thinking about pain, or the feeling of unpleasantness the venepuncture elicited. In a second study, the additional effect that VR might have at reducing pain and anxiety compared to a video game presented in a non-immersive way was isolated. Results showed that the VR medium indeed seems to have an additive anxiolytic effect compared to a non-VR distraction medium such as a tablet. More specifically, children that received the game in VR reported less anxiety than children that received the game on a tablet during their venepuncture. Those two studies illustrated well the usefulness of VR tools in effectively distracting children away from pain and anxiety and were in accordance with the literature demonstrating that VR might be the next state of the art non-pharmacological tool for pain and anxiety relief in hospitals across the globe.