Gaming as a training tool to train cognitive skills in Emergency Care: how effective is it?

Abstract

Training emergency care skills is critical for patient safety and an essential part of medical education. Increasing demands on competences of doctors and limited training budgets necessitate new and cost-effective training methods. In the last decade, serious games have been propagated to train complex skills; they are expected to facilitate active, engaging and intrinsically motivated learning. Erasmus MC has developed a serious game to train emergency care skills, as a preparation for the faceto- face training. This ‘abcdeSIM’ game provides a realistic online emergency department environment where doctors can assess and stabilize patients in a virtual emergency department.

Research questions: show residents, after using the abcdeSIM game, better emergency care skills before f2f-training than residents who did not use the game? Are they feeling engaged with the patient cases and more motivated for the course?