What Used to Be

Patient safety issues are one of the important core competencies required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education International LLC (ACGME-I) residency training in all the restructured hospitals. There is a need to ensure NUS medical graduates are well placed to handle these higher levels of training.

Problems We Identified

• Students feedback about the lack of exposure to concepts of patient safety
• Patient safety was unable to catch up with the continuous addition of unintended consequences
• Introduction of more sub-specialities and more gaps in care
• Nature of harm constantly evolving
• Culture of patient safety not adequate
• Inadequate incorporation in Undergraduate Training syllabus

What We Did

A gaming application “2nd Generation PASSED (PAtient Safety in Surgical EDucation)” on the iPad to teach concepts of patient safety was developed and rolled out. The aims of the game is two-fold:

1. Enhance the learning experience by incorporating real life adverse events and sentinel events that had taken place in hospital and introduce these learning aspects to students using gaming pedagogy;
2. Raise awareness of patient safety at everyday work in the healthcare system.

How This Helped

The game requires the students to search for suitable devices in the medication and equipment trolley, know the appropriate steps before performing a procedure, include checking for consent and patient identify verification, etc. A summary of learning points is shown to the students at the end of each act before they proceed to the next act of the game. Detailed steps of how the students had chosen to proceed with the game are recorded by the application which allows the educator to study and analyse the student’s learning behaviours.