Challenging Hazards Amidst Observational Simulation in the Emergency Department: Advancing Gamification in Simulation Education Through a Novel Resident-led Skills Competition

Abstract

Medical simulation competitions have become an increasingly popular method to provide a hands-on “gamified” approach to education and training in the health professions. The most well-known competition, SimWars, consists of well-coordinated teams that are tasked with completing a series of mind-bending clinical scenarios in front of a live audience through ‘bracket-style’ elimination rounds. Similarly, challenging hazards amidst observational simulation (CHAOS) in the emergency department (ED) is another novel approach to gamification in both its structure and feel. Conducted at the Council of Emergency Medicine Resident Directors (CORD) 2018 National Assembly in San Antonio, Texas, instead of assigning premeditated teams, it placed random Emergency Medicine (EM) faculty, residents, and medical students together in teams to test them on a variety of fundamental EM content areas. Additionally, the event incorporated multiple levels within each round, allowing the inclusion of additional information to be shared with participants to support “switching gears,” as is typical for teams working in the ED and augmenting the perceived level of “chaos.”To assess this pilot project, formal quantitative and qualitative feedback was solicited at the end of the session. Quantitative evaluation of the intervention was obtained through an eight-item questionnaire using a five-point Likert-type scale from 19 of the 20 enrolled participants (95% response rate). Responses were generally positive with an overall course rating score of 4.45 out of 5 (SD +/- 0.62). Qualitative feedback revealed that learners enjoyed performing procedures and networking with their EM colleagues. The majority of residents (95%) recommend the activity be integrated into subsequent conferences. Areas for improvement included shorter cases and minimizing technical malfunctions.CHAOS in the ED was a successful pilot study that incorporated gamification as a means to deploy simulation-based training at a national emergency medicine conference in a community of simulation educators. Future studies should focus on incorporating learners’ feedback into subsequent CHAOS iterations and reducing overhead costs to increase its adoption by both regional and national audiences.

The national dental undergraduate clinical skills competition known as the Guanghua Cup: an innovative and effective program that promoted undergraduate dental education in China

“…Future competitions can consider the addition of some of these items. Moreover, it is feasible to introduce dental simulation competitions, such as doctor-patient communication [ 18 ], to enhance students’ knowledge, skills, and professional attitudes; such competitions may ultimately enable students to apply such abilities to subsequent competitions. However, the issue of how to standardize the scoring to reflect fairness is a question that requires further scholarly attention.…”

Gamification of graduate medical education in an emergency medicine residency program

“…Systematic reviews of gamification in health professions education confirm that gamification has attracted the attention of educational researchers during the last few years, but there remains a scarcity of evidence and need for further theory-driven research [19][20][21]. In emergency medicine, we have seen success in gamification in various forms: game showstyle quizzing [7][8][9], simulation competitions [10][11][12], escape rooms [13][14][15], and more. However, to our knowledge, this is the first study to consider these impacts of gamification in a longitudinal fashion.…”

“…Although emergency medicine may be leading the way, existing gamification projects are typically single sessions, narrowly focused on a particular content area, and heavily reliant on quiz-style gaming [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Instead, we sought to investigate the impact of a long-running game held longitudinally throughout an entire academic year.…”

Some Things Change, Some Things Stay the Same: Trends in Canadian Education in Paediatric Cardiology and the Cardiac Sciences

“…Just as games engage learners through the use of constantly changing environments, so too can the gamification of medical education. 26 The Burden of Technology While technology offers many benefits and opportunities, new technology has also brought some new burdens 27 . Electronic medical records are now an intrinsic part of most major hospitals and many private practices.…”