Are serious games seriously good at preparing students for clinical practice?: A randomized controlled trial

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Game-Based Learning
• Pediatric Training

Background:

• Serious games (SGs) offer potential for enhancing pediatric medical education.
• Evaluating the impact of SGs on learner satisfaction, knowledge, and behavior is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the efficacy of a highly immersive SG in pediatric medical education.
• To compare SG effectiveness against an adaptive tutorial (AT) and a low-stimulus control (LSC).

Main Methods:

• Investigator-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) with 154 senior medical students.
• Interventions included a virtual hospital SG, AT, and LSC, over 8 weeks.
• Outcomes measured: learner satisfaction, 10-item MCQs for knowledge, and a 30-point simulated clinical management scenario (CMS) for behavior.

Main Results:

• No significant difference in MCQ knowledge scores between SG and control groups.
• The SG group significantly outperformed the LSC group in the CMS (p=0.005).
• No statistically significant difference in CMS performance between SG and AT groups (p=0.18).

Conclusions:

• This is the first investigator-blinded RCT on immersive SGs for pediatric clinical skills.
• SGs demonstrated improved knowledge translation to simulated clinical scenarios, especially versus LSC.
• Serious games show promise for enhancing pediatric medical training and clinical performance.