UNC Trauma Program: Patient Education and Injury Prevention through Serious Games

Help to Revolutionize Patient Education- Really!! Project Proposal Help to Revolutionize Patient Education- Really!! Critical discharge teaching, especially in busy emergency settings are often hurriedly delivered to usually to patients who are medicated and exhausted families. The instructions, usually provided in hardcopy with single color text, no pictures, and difficult to comprehend for those with lower levels of health literacy unsurprisingly end up on the floor board of the car never read by the patient or family. Compliance with discharge instructions have been gaining greater attention due to disincentives by CMS against hospital readmissions and suboptimal patient outcomes. Despite these clear deficiencies, there has been no wide-spread changes in the way discharge information is delivered. This project calls for the development of an i-pad or tablet-compatible application capable of displaying discharge instructions as text, multi-media, and simple flash games to improve comprehension, retention, compliance and overall improved patient outcomes. Additionally, the application can provide high-quality and easily tailored education bundles that can be delivered more consistently across entire hospital systems or trauma regions. Though this application cannot replace effective teaching from nurses and physicians, it can improve understanding, efficiency, compliance, and overall quality of patient teaching.

Serious Games to Prevent Serious Injuries Examples of Serious Games Build upon work from last semester to achieve the following: Use of interactive gaming technology to teach pediatrics and adults Exportable / accessible on mobile devices Future applications: Link to personal health portal which tracks performance on games and other interactive programs Links to translator services capable of video chat and transcription of written instructions