Mercy Medical Center: Developing a Band of Excellence through Gamification - Nurse Onboarding

I was quite inspired by Dr. Stacey Brull, Senior Director of Research, Education and Informatics. Her presentation showcased remarkably effective, but relatively simple games made with Storyline and free online software. Here are some key takeaways:

  • Going to gaming was a slow process, from traditional print materials, video, and eLearning before.

  • Gaming is a huge market. 63% of mobile gamers are female, and many play daily. Most are adult. So a nice match with their target audience (nurses).

  • From Simple to Complex

    • Plug and play games – easy, online, download, put your questions and content in. can set up in an hour, looks good.

      • C3softworks. created a games on how to mop a floor, wash hands properly etc. for staff. Had slot machine, questions, points. Went over well.

      • Classcraft – learners create an avatar, competed with other teams. More for K-12 but worked for this purpose

      • Goodsechase – scavenger hunt. They are in teams, have missions where they have to take photos of various things (specific staff members, policies ) and upload

      • Kahoot! – questions, people compete against others in the room, can see how others do

    • Customized games

      • games made with authorizing software to customize – such as articulate or captivate

      •  “strike-out stroke” – play the game, take a quiz through a QR code

    • Gamification

      • putting game like thing into a non-game context

      • getting points, “level-up”, put you on a leaderboard

      • they like to give prizes – not expensive things, but people are motivated by receiving things

    • Immersive gaming

      Their original program was 5 days of orientation – in a classroom costly and not effective. Cognitive overload.

    • Now a game with islands to visit (World of Salus), content areas, they can take competency test, but everyone actually likes to visit the content area and not just take the test. Learners can go to as many “knowledge objects” as they want, but do have to take all the competency tests.

    •  Another about leadership styles, where they can learn more about their leadership style with cards they can pick

  • Nurses are more competitive then she thought, they will do the knowledge objects over and over to get higher and higher on the leaderboard.

  • Staff loved it, reviewed favorably.

  • Quantatively, they could compare at LMS group, classroom group and gamification group and gamification group scored higher on all content tests.

  • Could see how much money was saved.

  • Article in the journal of nursing admin.

  • Virtual reality

    • just at the cusp of this

    • crash cart blitz – how to respond to emergency codes quickly without having to practice on patients in crisis (not really feasible).

    •  Video news report on mindgrub

  • VR can be used on hospitalized patients to send them to a peaceful world that calms them down and reduces pain scores.