Download Practising clinical competencies using Serious Games

Practising clinical competencies using Serious Games
Dr Pirashanthie Vivekananda-Schmidt (Project Lead), Academic Unit of Medical Education
Dr. Daniele Bryden (Clinical Expert), Richard Davidson and Ash Self (Technology), Robin Farr
(Videos), Academic Unit of Medical Education
For more information: [email protected]
Summary
In certain higher education training, such as healthcare, there is a need to acquire specific
competencies in controlled learning environments. However, there is often a gap in how and when
students are first able to safely apply these competencies in the workplace.
By immersing students in what may be real work life scenarios, Serious Games allows students to
try out their skills in virtual environments that mimic the workplace and allows them to role play
uncertainties similar to what may be encountered in real clinical practice. Student health
professionals therefore have the opportunity to try out decision-making skills in a safe environment
before applying them in the real world.
In addition to virtual environments, Serious Games also offer a number of features to support
learning. These include competition, learning through goal-directed play and character interaction.
Games also promote high order thinking that requires the player to recognise and respond to the
relationship between elements (e.g. characters, patient investigation results) and the consequences
of actions.
What issues were you trying to address?
By using Serious Games as an adjunct learning resource, we are trying to address the need to
provide students the opportunity to work in the context of a clinical setting and practise their skills
within time-sensitive scenarios. These virtual environments enable students to try out their
competencies in environments that mimic the workplace.
www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/toolkit
We aimed to:



design learning opportunities for our students to develop their decision-making skills without
compromising patient safety;
motivate, engage and achieve immersion in a virtual clinical environment; and
provide engaging opportunities in an affordable manner with existing physical and expert
resources.
What impact did your project have?
Student response
Student response has been very positive. With appropriate supervision, they have been a key part
in developing and designing the content of the games and acting in the videos. If a student-centred
approach had not been adopted we may not have seen the same level of response to the
scenarios, including humour. Furthermore, their contribution has resulted in the delivery of
presentations and papers at conference regarding their experience of this learning environment.
Following are examples of student feedback of the Serious Games developed:
„When you gave a response that was wrong, you immediately see that it‟s wrong and made you
think “what should have been the next step there?” „[P12]
„If you could keep it as members of the actual students doing it, it might actually be better as well‟
[P2]
„Yeah, that‟s a good point, I would feel less worried about being told off by students than if it was an
actual doctor. I didn‟t realise until now, but it‟s more relaxed‟ [P3]
Colleagues’ response
The response from colleagues has also been positive and we have presented at a number of
conferences including the Higher Education Academy Health Sciences Conference and
the London Web 2.0 conference.
We have received an award from the Oxford E-Research Centre to develop case studies to address
the ethical issues in developing Serious Games (with Daniela Romano, Computer Science). The
case studies focus on three key issues:
(1) how to determine game content taking variations in expert view into account;
(2) how user data (i.e. play traces of the game user) should be used; and
(3) what influence game characters may have on role modelling or teamwork and whether character
role varies by healthcare context.
www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/toolkit
What advice would you give others if they were to implement a similar approach?
This is a truly multidisciplinary project, which comprises human factors, psychology and education,
in addition to clinical and technical expertise. A lot of planning is required to develop the complex
decision trees and story boards. Furthermore, it entails thinking through, mapping and visualising
the entire spectrum to ensure the product has no continuity errors and is purposeful.
It is key to take into account the cost-benefit ratio of producing these types of videos in terms of
investment in staff resources, supervising content, its fidelity to the scenario you are trying to
simulate and its educational value.
Further information
To view, Serious Games in action, see the following link:
https://www.minerva.shef.ac.uk/touchstone/serious_gaming2/serious gaming capture-1/serious
gaming capture-1.html
Not to be reproduced in any form without permission © Academic Unit of Medical Education,
University of Sheffield.
To learn more about this initiative, please contact Dr Pirashanthie Vivekananda-Schmidt,
[email protected]
Additional reading on Virtual Environments
Romano, D.M. (2001). Features that Enhance the Learning of Collaborative Decision Making Skills
under Stress in Virtual Dynamic Environments.
Vivekananda-Schmidt, P. (2012). Ethics in the design of Serious Games for Healthcare and
Medicine in S. Arnab I. Dunwell and K. Debattista (Eds). Serious Games for Healthcare:
Applications and Implications. IGI Global.
www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/toolkit