Serious Games in Surgical Medical Education: A Virtual Emergency Department as a Tool for Teaching Clinical Reasoning to Medical Students

Abstract

BackgroundSerious games enable the simulation of daily working practices and constitute a potential tool for teaching both declarative and procedural knowledge. The availability of educational serious games offering a high-fidelity, three-dimensional environment in combination with profound medical background is limited, and most published studies have assessed student satisfaction rather than learning outcome as a function of game use.ObjectiveThis study aimed to test the effect of a serious game simulating an emergency department (“EMERGE”) on students’ declarative and procedural knowledge, as well as their satisfaction with the serious game.MethodsThis nonrandomized trial was performed at the Department of General, Visceral and Cancer Surgery at University Hospital Cologne, Germany. A total of 140 medical students in the clinical part of their training (5th to 12th semester) self-selected to participate in this experimental study. Declarative knowledge (measured with 20 multiple choice questions) and procedural knowledge (measured with written questions derived from an Objective Structured Clinical Examination station) were assessed before and after working with EMERGE. Students’ impression of the effectiveness and applicability of EMERGE were measured on a 6-point Likert scale.ResultsA pretest-posttest comparison yielded a significant increase in declarative knowledge. The percentage of correct answers to multiple choice questions increased from before (mean 60.4, SD 16.6) to after (mean 76.0, SD 11.6) playing EMERGE (P<.001). The effect on declarative knowledge was larger in students in lower semesters than in students in higher semesters (P<.001). Additionally, students’ overall impression of EMERGE was positive.ConclusionsStudents self-selecting to use a serious game in addition to formal teaching gain declarative and procedural knowledge.

OSCE 3D: a virtual clinical skills assessment tool for coronavirus pandemic times

“…In a more recent study, the authors tested the effect of a serious game simulating an emergency department and assessed the satisfaction and effect on students' declarative and procedural knowledge through pre-test-post-test. In this study, a signi cant increase in declarative knowledge was observed 18 . However, this serious game aimed at the teaching process, but not as a method of assessing skills.…”

Panorama do Uso de Games, Serious Games e Gamificação na Educação

“…O uso de games e gamifi cação no Ensino Superior tem visado desenvolver habilidades acadêmicas e práticas específi cas (GORBANEV et al, 2018;TRIVIÑO-CABRERA et al, 2017;NICOLAIDOU et al, 2015;CHON et al, 2019;VLACHOPOULOS;MAKRI, 2017;STARK;POMPEI, 2010), como também o aumento a motivação e o engajamento dos estudantes de forma mais efetiva ao utilizar uma linguagem similar aos games e aproximar da realidade tornando o aprendizado mais atrativo (VIEIRA et al, 2018). Além disso, com o aumento da educação a distância, pensar em estratégias para treinar habilidades práticas são fundamentais (CHON et al, 2019).…”

“…Na área da saúde, especialmente na medicina, serious games e simulações com pacientes virtuais permitem os estudantes colocarem em prática o conhecimento adquirido de treinarem as habilidades procedurais ao entrarem em contato com as consequências imediatas de diferentes decisões sem colocar vidas reais de pacientes em algum grau de risco. Dessa forma, o aumento de estudos e desenvolvimento de serious games e simuladores de pacientes virtuais tem sido signifi cativo por vir sendo apontados como ótimas estratégias para desenvolver e melhorar habilidades dos futuros profi ssionais e residentes, diminuindo os riscos de erros de diagnósticos e tratamento (CHON et al, 2019). Chon e colaboradores (2019) convidaram 1.600 estudantes de Medicina da Universidade de Colônia do 5o ao 12o semestre.…”

Mapping Behavioral Health Serious Game Interventions for Adults With Chronic Illness: Scoping Review

“…These games may be used to prevent disease [ 3 ], improve the health of patients with disease [ 4 ], and enhance social interaction to improve health [ 5 ]. Additional genres of serious games teach medical professionals skills [ 6 - 8 ], ultimately attempting to improve patient outcomes by improving clinician knowledge. A central attraction of electronic serious games is their ability to educate, motivate, and involve users without using conventional patient education that relies heavily on less engaging and often more intense training, such as written instruction or one-on-one consultation.…”