Training Surgical Teams Using Serious Games
Presentation Type
Poster
Abstract
Teamwork is critical to effective health care and ensuring patient safety and error recovery and mitigation (Baker, Gustafson, Beaubien, Salas, and Barach,2005). A striking 70% of all medical errors are attributed to breakdowns in the interactions among health care providers and health care teams (Studdert, Brennan, & Thomas, 2002). Retrospective analysis of incident and adverse event reports found communication and teamwork issues to be among the most frequent contributory factors (i.e., in 22-32% of reports) of patient safety incidents (Manser, 2009). Moreover, Manser (2009) also found that team communication problems were the strongest predictors of surgical errors. Team training to facilitate communication, leadership, and a variety of checklist interventions have sought to improve team-based healthcare and compliance with safe practice guidelines (Singer et al., 2015). The use of simulation-based training has been found in the literature to support team training and to facilitate better learning outcomes. Game-based training facilitates experiential learning which requires trainees to acquire newknowledge and skills in meaningful contexts in order to build more accurate mental models of the complex environment (Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2009; Kolb, 1984). As such, it is reasonable to explore if game-based training has the potential to improve team communication. Therefore, the purpose of the present work is to report the results of two studies examining the efficacy of a serious game designed to promote teamwork skills. The results suggest that a game-based approach to surgical team training holds promise.
Training Surgical Teams Using Serious Games
Teamwork is critical to effective health care and ensuring patient safety and error recovery and mitigation (Baker, Gustafson, Beaubien, Salas, and Barach,2005). A striking 70% of all medical errors are attributed to breakdowns in the interactions among health care providers and health care teams (Studdert, Brennan, & Thomas, 2002). Retrospective analysis of incident and adverse event reports found communication and teamwork issues to be among the most frequent contributory factors (i.e., in 22-32% of reports) of patient safety incidents (Manser, 2009). Moreover, Manser (2009) also found that team communication problems were the strongest predictors of surgical errors. Team training to facilitate communication, leadership, and a variety of checklist interventions have sought to improve team-based healthcare and compliance with safe practice guidelines (Singer et al., 2015). The use of simulation-based training has been found in the literature to support team training and to facilitate better learning outcomes. Game-based training facilitates experiential learning which requires trainees to acquire newknowledge and skills in meaningful contexts in order to build more accurate mental models of the complex environment (Cannon-Bowers & Bowers, 2009; Kolb, 1984). As such, it is reasonable to explore if game-based training has the potential to improve team communication. Therefore, the purpose of the present work is to report the results of two studies examining the efficacy of a serious game designed to promote teamwork skills. The results suggest that a game-based approach to surgical team training holds promise.