Serious game versus online course for pretraining medical students before a simulation-based mastery learning course on cardiopulmonary resuscitation

BACKGROUND: Although both recorded lectures and serious games have been used to pretrain health professionals before simulation training on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, they have never been compared. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare an online course and a serious game for pretraining medical students before simulation-based mastery learning on the management of sudden cardiac arrest. DESIGN: A randomised controlled trial. Participants were pretrained using the online course or the serious game on day 1 and day 7. On day 8, each participant was evaluated repeatedly on a scenario of cardiac arrest until reaching a minimum passing score. SETTING: Department of Simulation in Healthcare in a French medical faculty. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-two volunteer second-year medical students participated between June and October 2016 and 79 were assessed for primary outcome. INTERVENTIONS: The serious game used was Staying Alive, which involved a 3D realistic environment, and the online course involved a PowerPoint lecture. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The median total training time needed for students to reach the minimum passing score on day 8. This same outcome was also assessed 4 months later. RESULTS: The median training time (interquartile range) necessary for students to reach the minimum passing score was similar between the two groups: 20.5 (15.8 to 30.3) minutes in the serious game group versus 23 (15 to 32) minutes in the online course group, P = 0.51. Achieving an appropriate degree of chest compression was the most difficult requirement to fulfil for students in both groups. Four months later, the median training time decreased significantly in both groups, but no correlation was found at an individual level with the training times observed on day 8. CONCLUSION: The serious game used in this study was not superior to an online course to pretrain medical students in the management of a cardiac arrest. The absence of any correlation between the performances of students evaluated during two training sessions separated by 4 months suggests that some elements in the management of cardiac arrest such as compression depth can only be partially learned and retained after a simulation-based training. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov-NCT02758119.