Family Game Show-style Didactic for Teaching Nervous System Disorders during Emergency Medicine Training

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Neurology
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• Emergency medicine requires rapid recall of illness scripts for common conditions.
• Traditional teaching methods may not always optimize engagement for complex topics like neurologic emergencies.
• Developing interactive and engaging didactic sessions is crucial for effective medical training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create and evaluate an interactive didactic session for emergency medicine residents on neurologic emergencies.
• To leverage a game-show format to reinforce associations between diagnoses, presentations, and treatments.
• To improve learner engagement and knowledge retention of key neurologic conditions.

Main Methods:

• A survey was distributed nationally to emergency medicine educators to gather common word associations for neurologic diagnoses.
• A PowerPoint-based lecture, modeled after the game show "Family Feud," was developed using survey data.
• Residents participated in teams during a weekly conference, competing in the game followed by mini-lectures.

Main Results:

• Learners were highly engaged throughout the gamified session.
• Verbal feedback was uniformly positive, with learners expressing enthusiasm for the format.
• Residents requested more sessions utilizing a similar game-based approach.

Conclusions:

• The "Family Feud"-style lecture was an effective and high-yield method for refreshing neurology knowledge.
• Gamification significantly improved learner enjoyment, engagement, and attention.
• The program plans to implement similar interactive, game-based lectures in the future.