Background & Aims
Moderate to severe pain often strikes surgical patients in hospitals. Studies indicate that gaps in health professionals’ learning about pain and analgesia may contribute to this situation(1). Nowadays, it is observed that students need information in a short period of time, and that they often disperse their attention easily in the context of exclusively traditional lectures. In this scenario, educational games are a promising teaching and active learning methodology, which have an explicit didactic objective and can be adopted or adapted to improve, support or promote learning processes in a formal or informal learning context. It is believed that by bringing students closer to the content, through gamification, it can motivate learning and make the classroom environment closer and more attractive(2). This report presents a gamified educational activity on postoperative pain, developed with third-year undergraduate nursing students at a public university in southern Brazil.
Report of an experience of gamified educational activity, in the context of the discipline “Care in the Human Living Process II: the surgical health condition”, Undergraduate Course in Nursing, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The activity took place in April and September 2021 and was attended by two teachers and 49 regularly enrolled students. The planning of the activity was carried out considering the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model.
The face-to-face activity lasted 250 minutes: 1) Expository and dialogued – Introduction to pain as the fifth vital sign; 2) Interactive wall about scales – four groups, who should select one of the scales and gather in the shortest possible time, the set of printed stripes containing the information about the selected pain scale that would be fixed on the wall wall of the room. At this stage, the groups of students were able to research the topic from their smartphones, discuss and gather information about the scales, which were placed on the wall of the room, in a collaborative way, creating an overview of the pain assessment scales. At the end of the stage, the professors addressed the particularities of these scales in clinical practice and the points were added; 3) Quiz Game “What is the medication?” (100 minutes) – One group chooses a random letter, reads the first written tip about the medication, and challenges the other group to respond within 60 seconds.
All of them actively participated, demonstrating commitment and protagonism in learning. The game has obtained adhesion and positive results according to teachers and students, as an active teaching and learning methodology. The class will be kept in the discipline on a regular basis and a survey will be conducted to analyze the students’ learning.
1 Duke G. et al. Pain Management Knowledge and Attitudes of Baccalaureate Nursing Students and Faculty. Pain Manag Nurs. 2013; 14(1):11-9.
2 Damaševi?ius, R., Maskeli?nas, R., Blažauskas, T. (2023). Serious Games and Gamification in Healthcare: A Meta-Review. Information. 2023; 14(2):105.