Play to Progress: How Serious Games Are Revolutionizing Nursing Education

Imagine donning PPE and stepping into a bustling hospital room, poised to handle an emergency—only, it's all a simulation. Welcome to the new frontier of nursing education, where serious games like UbiSim, a nursing virtual reality (VR) platform, are shaping the next generation of nurses.

A meta-analysis found that “the knowledge and skills performance outcomes supported the use of serious games, which were found to be superior to conventional educational interventions.”

What Are Serious Games?

Serious games are digital or physical games designed for purposes other than mere entertainment. These are often used in sectors such as defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, and more.

In the context of nursing education, serious games provide a unique blend of theory and practice, fostering an immersive learning environment. Serious games have been shown to improve technical and interpersonal skills while also enhancing learner motivation. Moreover, they’re easy for nursing students to use, and user satisfaction is high.

The Benefits of Serious Games in Nursing Education

• Safe Environment to Practice: One of the primary advantages of serious games is that they allow students to make mistakes in a risk-free setting. Instead of potentially making errors with real patients, nurses can practice challenging scenarios in a simulated environment. Research has shown that serious games enable nurse learners to practice making safe decisions.
• Immediate Feedback: Serious games often provide feedback, enabling students to understand their mistakes and learn in real time. UbiSim provides a detailed automated feedback report, showing how a nurse did along each step of the process in VR.
• Increased Engagement: Interactive simulations can be more engaging than traditional lectures, which can lead to increased retention of knowledge. 
• Scalability: Simulations can be scaled to cater to a single student or a large group, ensuring that everyone receives the necessary training. 

UbiSim: A Game-Changer in Immersive Learning

UbiSim is a leading platform offering immersive virtual reality (VR) simulations specifically for nursing education. With a strong focus on realism and interactivity, UbiSim's platform provides numerous advantages:

• Diverse Scenarios: UbiSim covers a wide range of clinical scenarios, from basic nursing procedures like administering a blood product to a patient to complex med-surge care situations like implementing chest pain protocol for a patient with angina.
• Customizable Scenarios: A feature that only UbiSim offers is the ability to fully customize any of our scenarios with the Intuitive Editor. We also offer a community where other institutions share scenarios they’ve created.

Dr. Tina Barbour-Taylor, Lecturer at the University of West Florida shared about her experience with our editor: “If we were to have to send [scenarios] out to a software company and get them programmed for us, then that's a time period that we have to wait for it to come back. And to be able to do it on the fly instantly, then that gives us the ability to teach the students what we really want them to learn.” Read the whole case study.

• Multi-user Capability: UbiSim allows multiple users to enter the same virtual environment. This promotes team-based training and hones communication skills among nursing teams.
• Prep for Next Gen NCLEX: UbiSim helps learners develop clinical judgment skills, which effectively helps prepare them to take the Next Gen NCLEX (NGN) Exam. 

"Simulation helps learners prepare for the NCLEX because it is that standardized patient, that standardized environment. The more that they can practice through that whole nursing process, it makes them increase their clinical judgment and helps answer the questions on the NCLEX." - Amy Lee, Nursing Department Chair, Minot University

• Affordability: By harnessing VR, UbiSim provides an affordable alternative to traditional high-fidelity manikins and physical simulation centers.

Conclusion

Nursing education is undergoing a significant transformation, with serious games at the forefront of this change. Platforms like UbiSim demonstrate the vast potential of merging technology and education to create impactful learning experiences. As the line between play and progress blurs, the future of nursing education looks brighter than ever.