Game-based Learning in the Medical Field

     The idea for this post came to me while visiting my sister at medical school this past weekend.  I knew I wanted this posting to be an expansion of the uses of game-based learning in industry, but I wasn’t 100% certain of which direction to take until my sister told me about working with the patient simulators in the technology lab at her school. 

She attends the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM) in Lewisburg, WV, a school that leads the country in producing physicians who give optimal patient care.  One of the many reasons for their success has to with their practice on patient simulators, or as the students call them, robots.  WVSOM has an entire wing of their technology building modeled to look like patient rooms in a doctor’s office, emergency room, or hospital environment.  Each of these patient rooms contain robots modeled after men, women and children in need of medical care.  

Photo Provided By:Robert Couse-Baker

      While these simulators certainly don’t replace actual patients, they give the medical students at WVSOM the opportunity to learn and to practice their new skills in a safe environment without the fear of harming an actual patient when trying a procedure for the first time.  All of the patient simulators have pulses, a heartbeat, lung sounds, their chest that moves up and down, they have pupillary light response, they can blink, have a blood pressure and can speak with the aid of a facilitator.  Their heart has real rhythms that can be programmed into arrhythmias and the can be given CPR chest compressions and defibrillation, if needed. Student doctors can administer medications to them, take their blood pressure, put in IVs, intubate them, administer CPR to them and do many other procedures.  There are even specialized simulators like Harvey, who simulates actual heart and lung sounds, or Noel who gives birth.       Each of these robots provides the student doctors with important training before they attempt these procedures on a real patient.

     It’s not just medical schools that use simulators. Dental students at the Medical College of Georgia, and other schools of dentistry, use simulators to practice patient care and to do tricky procedures like tooth implantation or extraction.  Many university hospitals have surgical programs or simulators that allow doctors to practice difficult surgeries via computer or simulator before doing the actual procedure on a real patient. Programs, like “Pulse” that provide civilian and military doctors a place to practice patient care and clinical skills.  There are even computer games, like “Free Dive,” that are used as a distraction to manage pain in pediatric patients while they are undergoing painful procedures. In this game, children can simulate an undersea dive and experience the peaceful life in the ocean, as the doctors attend to their needs.

     Game-based learning is a very effective tool in so many realms.  Its use in the medical field provides a safe playing field for student doctors and dentists, as well as practicing dentists, physicians and other medical staff to practice many areas of patient care and procedures.