Serious Gaming in Medicine: Development of a Virtual Mechanical Ventilator for Pediatric Critical Care
|
If you are the presenter of this abstract (or if you cite this abstract in a talk or on a poster), please show the QR code in your slide or poster (QR code contains this URL). |
Abstract
Background: Post-graduate medical trainees face many challenges when trying to master complex concepts in the pediatric critical care environment. The emergence of innovative technologies, such as serious gaming, actively incorporates principles of adult learning theory, offers the potential to accelerate learning for complex topics such as mechanical ventilation, and allows the learner to practice prior to performance. Serious gaming is commonly used in many industries including aviation and defense as part of training and continuing education. Here we describe the development and early use of a virtual mechanical ventilation simulator for pediatric critical care providers.
Methods: The virtual mechanical ventilation simulator was developed based on the alveolar gas equation and expert-derived algorithms. It incorporates all essential components of managing a mechanically ventilated child including clinical assessment of the patient, ventilator, and monitoring, as well as graphical displays of waveforms, capnography, patient generated variables, and arterial blood gas measurements that result from device manipulations. The ventilator contains a knowledge guide, short problems to solve, and case studies. After field-testing for usability and quality assurance, the device was deployed on OPENPediatrics (OP), a global web-based training platform. Robust analytics embedded in the platform track use patterns, and user surveys provide qualitative feedback for ongoing formative evaluation.
Results: Since the release of the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator in September 2012, it has been used 498 times by 255 pediatric critical care providers, with each user spending an average of 78 minutes on the ventilator activities. 43 users completed an online survey after using the ventilator, and 84% (36/43) of users reported that the ventilator was useful or very useful. Through structured formative evaluation, we identified additional functionality that could be included to improve the learning experience, including improved ventilator waveforms, a scoring legend, and hints. These additions were added and released in several versions over 14 months.
Conclusion: Although still in the beta release stage, the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator holds the potential for providing a robust experiential learning modality to help train pediatric critical care providers in mechanical ventilation. Qualitative feedback suggests high user satisfaction. Ongoing work is necessary to validate the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator, better understand common challenges faced by learners, and further refine the learning experience.
Methods: The virtual mechanical ventilation simulator was developed based on the alveolar gas equation and expert-derived algorithms. It incorporates all essential components of managing a mechanically ventilated child including clinical assessment of the patient, ventilator, and monitoring, as well as graphical displays of waveforms, capnography, patient generated variables, and arterial blood gas measurements that result from device manipulations. The ventilator contains a knowledge guide, short problems to solve, and case studies. After field-testing for usability and quality assurance, the device was deployed on OPENPediatrics (OP), a global web-based training platform. Robust analytics embedded in the platform track use patterns, and user surveys provide qualitative feedback for ongoing formative evaluation.
Results: Since the release of the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator in September 2012, it has been used 498 times by 255 pediatric critical care providers, with each user spending an average of 78 minutes on the ventilator activities. 43 users completed an online survey after using the ventilator, and 84% (36/43) of users reported that the ventilator was useful or very useful. Through structured formative evaluation, we identified additional functionality that could be included to improve the learning experience, including improved ventilator waveforms, a scoring legend, and hints. These additions were added and released in several versions over 14 months.
Conclusion: Although still in the beta release stage, the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator holds the potential for providing a robust experiential learning modality to help train pediatric critical care providers in mechanical ventilation. Qualitative feedback suggests high user satisfaction. Ongoing work is necessary to validate the virtual mechanical ventilation simulator, better understand common challenges faced by learners, and further refine the learning experience.
Medicine 2.0® is happy to support and promote other conferences and workshops in this area. Contact us to produce, disseminate and promote your conference or workshop under this label and in this event series. In addition, we are always looking for hosts of future World Congresses. Medicine 2.0® is a registered trademark of JMIR Publications Inc., the leading academic ehealth publisher.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.