What if by playing an engaging video game, someone without any medical training, can effortlessly learn
how to approach nearly every acute threat of life within a hospital setting? What is a video game can
teach you how to save lives? This is what my partners and I are trying to accomplish through CodeRunner. We firmly believe that video games can actually train players to perform tremendously
complex tasks in ways that classical didactic methods, such as texts and lectures, have never been able
to do. There is a growing research in using video games to provide enjoyable and innovative ways to
train players in concepts germane to basic elementary education, and we are looking to push the
envelope to further apply this tool to the vocational fields.
Within the medical field, all nurses, medics, and resident physicians receive roughly 10-16 hours of
Advance Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) training and are then expected to be a functional component of a
team handling critically acute patients in the hospital setting. Further, this training only addresses about
25-30% of the life-threatening events that can occur in the hospital. To address this deficit, we are
introducing Code-Runner: a video game which, using classic game features such as advancing levels,
rewards, graduated accumulation of tools, and ‘game tension’, will teach even those without formal
medical education how to coordinate care of nearly every acute life-threatening event that professional
physicians are expected to handle.
We hold that a video game is a great platform for this because it provides a forum for repetition that
cannot be matched by existing simulation centers and real-world experience. Unlike the standard
simulation model, which presents only a set of basic static scenarios, Code-Runner offers a real-world,
probabilistic distribution of various types of diseases with varying severity and complexity, based on
physiologic and epidemiological principles, thereby offering an infinite variety of scenarios. In addition
to the pulseless, arrhythmia, stroke, and heart attack patients taught in the ACLS courses, our game
present patients with any cause of pulmonary, circulatory, central nervous, or metabolic collapse, as
well as trauma and normal, relatively healthy, patients (often the biggest task of the doctor is to tell who
is sick and who is well).
Through graphical patient representation, the player can become adept in crucial physical exam skills.
Through levels of gradually increasing difficulty, the player learns these skills in pieces that build upon
each other. Level one (student level) teaches the player how to triage, order the proper monitors, and
access the patient to determine his acuity category. Level two (intern level) teaches the player to access
the patient airway, breathing, circulation, and mental status, and provide initial life-saving measures to
support the patient before he would fall into collapse. Level three (chief level) teaches how to
definitively resuscitate and stabilize a patient for transport to definitive care, while cycling through any
new possible threats to life. Level four (attending level) teaches the player where to send the stabilized
patient for definitive care and testing.
In the gaming environment, we also provide two modes to each level: tutor mode, a teaching
environment where instructions are provided within the game and more time is allotted to treat the
patient, and challenge mode, a testing environment where the player must stabilize and/or access a
given number of patients within short and often “intense” timeframes.
My partners and I believe this game will succeed on three levels: (1) as an enjoyable game to be played
by both medical and non-medical players, (2) as a teaching device for both medical and non-medical
players, and (3) as a testing device, to help access the skill level of those tasked with saving our lives.