Toward A Serious Game to Help Future Military Doctors Face Mass Casualty Incidents

To prepare military doctors to face mass casualty incidents (MCIs), the French Army Health Service contributed to the development of TRAUMASIMS, a serious game (SG) for training medical responders to MCIs.

French military doctors participated in a three-phase training study. The initial war trauma training was a combination of didactic lectures (Phase 1), laboratory exercises (Phase 2), and situational training exercises (STX) (Phase 3). Phase 1 lectures reviewed French Forward Combat Casualty Care (FFCCC) practices based on the acronym MARCHE (Massive bleeding, Airway, Respiration, Circulation, Head, hypothermia, Evacuation) for the detection of care priorities and implementation of life-saving interventions, triage, and medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) requests. Phase 2 was a case-control study that consisted of a traditional text-based simulation of MCIs (control group) or SG training (study group). Phase 3 was clinical: military students had to simultaneously manage five combat casualties in a prehospital setting. MCI management was evaluated using a standard 20-item scale of FFCCC benchmarks, 9-line MEDEVAC request, and time to evacuate the casualty collection point (CCP). Emotional responses of study participants were secondarily analyzed.

Among the 81 postgraduate military students included, 38 took SG training, and 35 trained with a text-based simulation in Phase 2. Regarding the error rates made during STX (Phase 3), SG improved FFCCC compliance (11.9% vs. 23.4%; p < .001). Additionally, triage was more accurate in the SG group (93.4% vs. 88.0%; p = .09). SG training mainly benefited priority and routine casualties, allowing faster clearance of the CCP (p = .001). Stress evaluations did not demonstrate any effect of immersive simulation.

A brief SG-based curriculum (2 hours) improved FFCCC performance and categorization of casualties in MCI STX.