Using a serious game to complement CPR instruction in a nurse faculty

Abstract

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a first aid key survival technique used to stimulatebreathing and keep blood flowing to the heart. Its effective administration can signifi-cantly increase the chances of survival for victims of cardiac arrest. LISSA is a serious gamedesigned to complement CPR teaching and also to refresh CPR skills in an enjoyable way. Thegame presents an emergency situation in a 3D virtual environment and the player has tosave the victim applying the CPR actions. In this paper, we describe LISSA and its evaluationin a population composed of 109 nursing undergraduate students enrolled in the Nursingdegree of our university. To evaluate LISSA we performed a randomized controlled trial thatcompares the classical teaching methodology, composed of self-directed learning for theoryplus laboratory sessions with a mannequin for practice, with the one that uses LISSA afterself-directed learning for theory and before laboratory sessions with a mannequin. From ourevaluation we observed that students using LISSA (Group 2 and 3) gave significantly betterlearning acquisition scores than those following traditional classes (Group 1). To evaluatethe differences between students of these groups we performed a paired samples t-testbetween Group 1 and 2 ( 1= 35, 67, 2= 47, 50 and p < 0.05) and between students of Group1 and 3 ( 1= 35, 67, 3= 50, 58 and p < 0.05). From these tests we observed that there aresignificant differences in both cases. We also evaluated student performance of main stepsof CPR protocol. Students that use LISSA performed better than the ones that did not use it