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

Seung-Hun Chon; Ferdinand Timmermann; Thomas Dratsch; Nikolai Schuelper; Patrick Plum; Felix Berlth; Rabi Raj Datta; Christoph Schramm; Stefan Haneder; Martin Richard Späth; Martin Dübbers; Julia Kleinert; Tobias Raupach; Christiane Bruns; Robert Kleinert

doi:10.2196/13028

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

JMIR Serious Games. 2019 Mar 5;7(1):e13028. doi: 10.2196/13028.

Authors

Seung-Hun Chon¹, Ferdinand Timmermann², Thomas Dratsch², Nikolai Schuelper³, Patrick Plum¹, Felix Berlth¹, Rabi Raj Datta¹, Christoph Schramm⁴, Stefan Haneder⁵, Martin Richard Späth^{6

7}, Martin Dübbers¹, Julia Kleinert¹, Tobias Raupach^{8

9}, Christiane Bruns¹, Robert Kleinert¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of General, Visceral and Cancer Surgery, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
² University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
³ Department of Haematology and Medical Oncology, University Medical Centre Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
⁴ Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁵ Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁶ Department II of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Medicine, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁷ Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging Associated Diseases, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁸ Department of Cardiology and Pneumology, University Medical Centre Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
⁹ Division of Medical Education Research and Curriculum Development, University Medical Centre Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.

PMID: 30835239
PMCID: PMC6423463
DOI: 10.2196/13028

Abstract

Background: Serious 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.

Objective: This 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.

Methods: This 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.

Results: A 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.

Conclusions: Students self-selecting to use a serious game in addition to formal teaching gain declarative and procedural knowledge.

Keywords: clinical reasoning; medical education; serious game; surgical education; virtual emergency department.

©Seung-Hun Chon, Ferdinand Timmermann, Thomas Dratsch, Nikolai Schuelper, Patrick Plum, Felix Berlth, Rabi Raj Datta, Christoph Schramm, Stefan Haneder, Martin Richard Späth, Martin Dübbers, Julia Kleinert, Tobias Raupach, Christiane Bruns, Robert Kleinert. Originally published in JMIR Serious Games (http://games.jmir.org), 05.03.2019.