Training of medical professionals can use serious gaming. Training became a serious issue for the European Design Center several years ago because doctors presented to them the fact that 36000 patients in the Netherlands have complications caused by errors during the intervention. In 1960 of these cases the patient dies because of these complications. It is expected that training could reduce this by 55%. This resulted in Medsim, a spinoff company where multidisciplinary teams work on training methods and devices for medical interventions. Medsim provides high tech and realistic simulators in a safe environment.
These training sessions are very expensive and cannot be done more than 2 or 3 times per year per team. To allow additional training, serious gaming could have a major role. In serious games fun = learning. An interesting result is that a study showed that high school kids were better in operating on a simulator than gynacologists.
A demonstration was given of the serious game in development called birthplay for gynacologists to practice delivery of a child in breech. It is a role playing game in which the player can assume different roles such as nurse or gynacologist.
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