A serious game for teaching general practice management

Abstract

The healthcare sector is a stakeholder-rich environment where many factors influence the quality of healthcare. Healthcare professionals are required to manage their organization at the same professional level as they perform their profession. The general practitioner (GP) domain is a prominent example that is before everybody’s eyes. Multiple studies on the quality of GP educational programs in the Netherlands revealed that the majority of GPs in training and recently graduated GPs are dissatisfied with what they learn about running an own general practice. Their gained knowledge is mostly theory they study from textbooks as opposed to hands-on experience. The new-generation GPs are raised digitally and need novel learning methods that are better aligned with the modern society. We study the use of serious games to bridge this gap: serious games do not primarily focus on entertainment. In this thesis, we describe a serious game design called General Practice Manager that is aligned with teaching general practice management in the Dutch context. Our design is based on our proposed design framework that is built from a thorough study of the literature, document analyses and expert interviews. We developed a prototype of the game to demonstrate and evaluate the proposed design. The results obtained through focus group sessions and expert interviews indicate that our serious game design is a good start and has potential to bridge the educational gap, but also shows room for improving its realism and effectiveness.