An educational game for teaching clinical practice guidelines to Internal Medicine residents: development, feasibility and acceptability.
BACKGROUND
Adherence to Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) remains suboptimal among internal medicine trainees. Educational games are of growing interest and have the potential to improve adherence to CPGs. The objectives of this study were to develop an educational game to teach CPGs in Internal Medicine residency programs and to evaluate its feasibility and acceptability.


METHODS
We developed the Guide-O-Game(c) in the format of a TV game show with questions based on recommendations of CPGs. The development of the Guide-O-Game(c) consisted of the creation of a multimedia interactive tool, the development of recommendation-based questions, and the definition of the game's rules. We evaluated its feasibility through pilot testing and its acceptability through a qualitative process.


RESULTS
The multimedia interactive tool uses a Macromedia Flash web application and consists of a manager interface and a user interface. The user interface allows the choice of two game styles. We created so far 16 sets of questions relating to 9 CPGs. The pilot testing proved that the game was feasible. The qualitative evaluation showed that residents considered the game to be acceptable.


CONCLUSIONS
We developed an educational game to teach CPGs to Internal Medicine residents that is both feasible and acceptable. Future work should evaluate its impact on educational outcomes.
Akl
Elie A
EA
Department of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, NY, USA. elieakl@buffalo.edu
Mustafa
Reem
R
Slomka
Thomas
T
Alawneh
Alia
A
Vedavalli
Abhishek
A
Schünemann
Holger J
HJ
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D018961:Educational Technology / Q000592:standards*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education* / Q000592:standards; D020407:Internet; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000379:methods*; D009518:New York; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D013690:Television; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018910:Video Games / Q000592:standards*