Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Feb 5, 2025
Date Accepted: Sep 26, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Gamified Simulation for the Initial Training of Healthcare Teams in a High-Turnover Environment
ABSTRACT
Background:
Staff turnover remains a significant challenge for hospital departments, especially in environments as demanding as emergency departments (EDs). High staff turnover (up to 22% annually) imposes significant strains on existing teams, delaying operational readiness and jeopardizing care quality.
Objective:
To address these challenges, we developed a gamified simulation designed to immerse future employees in a virtual reconstruction of the hospital’s facilities.
Methods:
This solution, deployed as an online platform, empowers new staff to efficiently familiarize themselves with key operational aspects such as premises, equipment, and personnel through engaging interactive quests. Additionally, a complementary web application allows medical teams to adapt the simulation to reflect evolving departmental needs (e.g., new quests, rewards, avatars, quizzes, and equipment) without IT intervention.
Results:
Initial user tests yielded positive feedback, suggesting the potential to reduce on-boarding time by 30 to 40%. For a department with 100 staff members and a turnover rate of 22\%.
Conclusions:
This could save approximately 2,500 staff-hours annually, equivalent to reallocating nearly 1.3 full-time positions to patient care. This paper thoroughly examines the conceptual design, initial outcomes, and strategic considerations for scaling this solution, substantiated by detailed figures and technical analyses.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.