Game-based training improves the surgeon’s situational awareness in the operation room: a randomized controlled trial

Graafland, Maurits, Willem Bemelman, Marlies Schijven, Willem A Bemelman, and Marlies P Schijven. 2017. “Game-Based Training Improves the Surgeon’s Situational Awareness in the Operation Room: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Surgical Endoscopy 31 (10): 4093–4101. doi:10.1007/s00464-017-5456-6.

In the article “Game-based training improves the surgeon’s situational awareness in the operation room: a randomized controlled trial,” Graafland, Bemelman, and Schijven describe their experiment testing the effectiveness of game-based training on a surgeon’s ability to identify and solve problems with equipment during an operation. The article goes through the procedures used to measure a possible difference: having a control group that only has the standard training, and an experimental group that also gets an hour of training using a serious game developed specifically for this purpose. The game consists of a fairly basic but engagin puzzle game that is interrupted by problems that the surgeon could experience with the actual equipment, after which the surgeon must notice the problem, and attempt to fix it in order to move on in the game. After the two groups completed their training, they were taken into a mock surgery to test how well they could react to technology malfunctions. In most cases, the students who had the game-based training identified the problem more often, and were also able to solve it more often. There were no cases where the opposite was true.

This article gives fairly strong evidence for serious games being a usable teaching tool for surgical students. More specifically it shows that serious games work as a supplement to standard classroom teaching. It does not support or refute the idea of using serious games as a replacement for classroom teaching. The article is peer reviewed, and published in a pediatric radiology journal. The journal reports that there are no conflicts of interest for any of the contributors. This article appears very trustworthy, and will likely be my main source of evidence towards games being used as a teaching tool in the medical field.