Analog Serious Games for Medical Education: A Scoping Review

Serious games are increasingly used in medical education to actively engage learners. Analog serious games are a nondigital subset of serious games with specific purposes that go beyond entertainment. This scoping review describes the literature pertaining to analog serious games and provides recommendations regarding gaps and emerging directions for future research.

The authors conducted a scoping review following the Arksey and O'Malley framework, searching 3 databases (MEDLINE, Embase, and CINAHL) for studies of analog serious games designed for physician-track learners published from January 2013 through December 2023. Two authors independently screened the titles and abstracts, whereas 1 of 5 authors screened each full text and extracted data from eligible records. The authors iteratively analyzed the data within numerous categories and coded the findings to examine how the field has evolved during the past decade.

The searches retrieved 3,955 records with 865 duplicates. The authors reviewed 3,090 title and abstract records and 202 full-text records. Eighty-eight records met the inclusion criteria, including research reports, conference abstracts, descriptive reports, and short innovation reports. The peak years for publications were 2019 and 2023 (15 publications each). Fewer abstracts and articles were published during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., 2020-2022). The most common scholarship type was description studies (63 [72%]), whereas the dominant game formats were board games (51 [58%]) and card games (33 [38%]). Most studies tested analog serious games with medical students (60 [68%]) and/or residents and fellows (39 [44%]), with numerous studies including mixed study populations.

This scoping review demonstrates moderate growth within the field of analog serious games, along with numerous opportunities for future research. Although analog game-based learning cannot entirely replace traditional pedagogical approaches, analog serious games have potential to meaningfully complement education for physician-track learners in all medical training stages.