I had an “aha” moment a while back. I remember listening to one of our product managers discuss the differentiators and relevant points of use of hand sanitizers.
A recent discovery assessment of more than 100 post-acute providers across the nation identifying long-term care infection prevention challenges found that 63% of professionals acknowledge that they have performance gaps in hand hygiene compliance. And according to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), proper hand hygiene is the number one way to help reduce the spread of infection.
This made me think about ways that we can help staff learn. Games can be a simple way to educate versus development of complex training materials and lecturing, and studies have found that games engage staff and bolster retention. That said, it is still important to have an education plan, and use of a game can simplify how the material is presented.
As an example, I came up with the idea of a game to teach staff hand hygiene compliance as part of our Post-Acute Care Infection Prevention Program. The cards outline different scenarios that clinicians experience while administering care, such as feeding a resident, transferring a resident from the bed to a chair, gathering wound care supplies, and cleaning rooms. The caregiver then identifies the correct hand hygiene product to use, detailed on the cards. The initial iteration was much more complicated, but once I figured it out, a card game format really fit with the material being taught.
We also hear a lot about considerations for the different generations in the workplace and in education. Use of gamification in continuing education can appeal cross-generationally. Not to call out any particular generations, but each group has facets that games may appeal to.
For example, Gen-X’ers tend to be independent learners. A game is a good way for an individual learner to progress at their own ability and speed. Millennials like instant feedback — games provide that! Gen Z is used to learning through multiple channels, and games can be one of those channels.
Benefits of gamification
The benefits of gamification in medical education have been well documented. A growing number of medical schools with gamified training platforms include educational games, mobile medical apps and virtual patient scenarios. This means future healthcare workers may expect to encounter these kinds of applications for their continuing education when they enter the “real world.”
Healthcare education for staff via gamification techniques can be delivered in the form of simulations, virtual reality (VR) constructs and games. Some other ways I’ve seen dedicated specialists bring gamification to continuing education that caught my eye include escape rooms, videos and interactive electronic games.
In most healthcare and wellness-related applications, gamification can yield positive results in three ways:
- Progress bars used to measure success, increasing the perceived value of the service by invoking progress-related psychological biases.
- A way to share progress and results with friends or other users of the service by creating a competitive spirit to draw better use of the service.
- Giving users a sense of achievement by awarding progress medals, badges, stars or other virtual gifts at each stage of development.
The skills you will need to effectively implement gamification into post-acute systems include:
- Teamwork to implement gamification on a broad level and maintain standards.
- Technological savvy to leverage the most recent innovations and stay up to date on how techniques are evolving.
- Customer relation skills to help patients or staff understand and troubleshoot their applications.
- Leadership to set a vision and provide clear sense of direction for how gamification can be used.
- Sales and marketing skills to help healthcare providers seek buy-in for gamification efforts.
- Organizational, decision making and goal setting skills to build a professional culture in which gamification is valued and innovation is sought.
Consider expanding your circle when it comes to continuing education. Players don’t have to be just staff, but can extend to residents, their families, volunteers, activities coordinators and dietary support. Increasing the number of individuals focused on best practices and control can ensure your gamification program has continuity.
Also, patient-centered apps with gamification elements can help monitor the progress of an individual’s nutrition, physical therapy and daily physical activity to promote health and better outcomes. This can be notably helpful in facilities that are experiencing staffing shortages.
Healthcare staff are overwhelmed and fatigued from ongoing post-COVID-19 pressures and challenges. A back-to-basics approach for long-term care facilities that includes implementing targeted education and training programs that are creative, innovative and engaging, finding ways to make manual observations more efficient, and using champions to support continuing education can lead to improvements in clinical standardization.
Considering 100% of respondents in the aforementioned discovery assessment agreed that clinical standardization is important or extremely important, gamification in your continuing education program could be a very useful and valuable tool in your 2023 toolbox.
Caryn Arnold, RN BSN MBA CNOR(E) a-IPC, is a Medical Science Liaison for Medline. Caryn is a long-term member of Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), has served on committees and specialty groups, has collaborated, and authored several articles on improvements in healthcare in nursing and healthcare executive journals. She has been instrumental in developing and authoring continuing education offerings at Medline.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
