Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Feb 25, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 3, 2025 - Apr 28, 2025
Date Accepted: May 22, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Developing a Serious Game to Simulate Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Experiences: Collaboration Between a Neonatologist and University Students: Quasi-Experimental Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Opportunities for neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) training are limited for medical and nursing students owing to patient safety concerns and the complexities of neonatal care.
Objective:
To enhance our understanding of neonatal intensive care, we developed a serious game that simulates a comprehensive NICU experience.
Methods:
The game was developed over 14 months by six members—a neonatologist, four medical students, and an art student—at a total cost of 10,000 USD. After the storyline was finalized by the neonatologist, the team used TyranoBuilder, a user-friendly visual novel tool, to create the game. The game is divided into six chapters, offers a comprehensive NICU experience, and is available as a free iOS/Android/Steam application. After completing the game, players were invited to participate in an optional survey to gather demographic data and user feedback.
Results:
The game has been downloaded 2,090 times on iOS and 506 times on Android as of November 2024. Survey responses were obtained from 160 participants, with healthcare professionals and students comprising 46.3% of the participants. The highest proportion of respondents (36.9%) were in the 20–29 age range. The mean scores for game length, difficulty, and gameplay were 3.05, 2.49, and 3.65, respectively, indicating a balanced design. Regarding educational value, the mean scores for empathy with the story, usefulness for knowledge acquisition, and effectiveness of serious games as learning tools were all above four, suggesting proper educational content.
Conclusions:
We developed a serious game to enhance neonatal care education at a low cost through collaboration between a neonatologist and students.
Citation
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Copyright
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