Vaginal breech birth management: serious mobile game design and evaluation for midwifery students

The skills required to safely manage vaginal breech birth are declining among healthcare professionals, while midwifery students have limited practice opportunities due to its rarity. Innovative techniques, such as simulation and gamification, have the potential to enhance the acquisition of these essential skills.

This study has two aims. The first aim is to design a serious mobile game on vaginal breech birth management for midwifery students. The second aim is to evaluate the effect of the serious mobile game-based teaching approach on learning.

A prospective, pretest-posttest, randomized controlled quasi-experimental method was used. The study was conducted with 79 third-year midwifery students (game group = 39, control group = 40) studying in a midwifery department between February-December 2022. After developing the Vaginal Breech Birth Management serious mobile game for midwifery students, students in the game group were educated with serious mobile game, while students in the control group were educated with the traditional teaching method. Questionnaire forms were used to collect data.

The Vaginal Breech Birth Management knowledge test day 0 score median of the students in the game group was significantly higher than those in the control group (p < 0,05). However, there was no statistical significance between the median scores of the 14th day of the Vaginal Breech Birth Management knowledge test and the seventh month between the play and control groups (p > 0,05), and it was determined that the scores of the participants in both groups decreased with time.

The serious mobile game developed increased students' short-term knowledge level of vaginal breech birth management but was not effective in the retention of long-term knowledge. It is recommended that the serious mobile game developed for teaching Vaginal Breech Birth Management should be integrated into the traditional teaching method and used as a reinforcement method.