Development and evaluation of an emergency department serious game for undergraduate medical students.

BACKGROUND: Serious games are risk-free environments training various medical competencies, such as clinical reasoning, without endangering patients' safety. Furthermore, serious games provide a context for training situations with unpredictable outcomes. Training these competencies is particularly important for healthcare professionals in emergency medicine. METHODS: Based on these considerations, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a serious game in form of an emergency department, containing the features of a virtual patient generator, a chatbot for medical history taking with self-formulated questions, artificially generated faces based on an artificial intelligence algorithm, and feedback for students. The development process was based on an already existing framework resulting in an iterative procedure between development and evaluation. The serious game was evaluated using the System Usability Scale and the User Experience Questionnaire. RESULTS: The System Usability Scale provided a substantial result for the usability. In terms of the user experience, four scales yielded positive results, whereas two scales yielded neutral results. CONCLUSION: The evaluation of both usability and user experience yielded overall positive results, while simultaneously identifying potential areas for improvement. Further studies will address the implementation of additional game design elements, and testing student learning outcome.

Intubation in acute alcohol intoxications at the emergency department.

BACKGROUND: Guidelines recommend endotracheal intubation in trauma patients with a Glasgow coma scale (GCS) < 9 because of the loss of airway reflexes and consequential risk of airway obstruction. However, in patients with acute alcohol intoxication guidelines are not clear. Thus, we aimed to determine the proportional incidence of intubation in alcohol intoxication and compare the clinical characteristics of intubated and non-intubated patients, as well as reasons for intubation in all patients and in the subgroup of patients with reduced GCS (< 9) but without traumatic brain injury. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of all consultations to an urban ED in Switzerland that presented with an acute alcohol intoxication between 1st June 2012 and 31th Mai 2017. Patient and emergency consultations' characteristics, related injuries, intubation and reason for intubations were extracted. As a subgroup analysis, we analysed the patients with a GCS < 9 without a traumatic brain injury. RESULTS: Of 3003 consultations included from 01.06.2012 to 31.05.2017, 68 were intubated, leading to a proportional incidence of 2.3% intubations in alcohol-intoxication. Intubated patients had a lower blood alcohol concentration (1.3 g/kg [IQR 1.0-2.2] vs. 1.6 g/kg [IQR1.1-2.2], p = 0.034) and less often suffered from chronic alcohol abuse (1183 [39.4%] patients vs. 14 [20.6%], p = 0.001) than non-intubated patients. Patients with trauma were intubated more often (33 patients [48.5%] vs. 742 [25.3%], p < 0.001). In subgroup analysis, 110/145 patients (74.3%) were not intubated; again, more intubated patients had a history of trauma (9 patients [25.7%] vs. 10 [9.1%], p = 0.011). CONCLUSIONS: Intubation in alcohol-intoxicated patients is rare and, among intoxicated patients with GCS < 9, more than two thirds were not intubated in our study - without severe complications. Trauma in general, independent of the history of a traumatic brain injury, and a missing history of chronic alcohol abuse are associated with intubation, but not with blood alcohol concentration. Special caution is required for intoxicated patients with trauma or other additional intoxications or diseases.