Serious games in medical education: Why, what and how

Abstract

Introduction: Use of appropriate teaching-learning strategies play a unique role in improving the learning process of medical students. This research aims to investigate what, why and how serious games affect teaching methods. Methods: This review paper extracted papers published on serious game conception, medical education, serious gaming applications, universities experiences, and serious games strategies from global scientific databases including; Scopus, Science Direct, Google Scholar، and domestic scientific databasessuch as; Magiran, Noormags and  SID.  Results: Serious games have been promoted widely in medical education to challenge the users to solve their problems in teaching and learning. This method was found entertaining by learners as well as teachers and provided opportunities for development of different competencies for the learners. Conclusion: These games play an important role in obtaining the necessary competencies for learners in medical education. We recommend decision makers to introduce this method to the Iranian medical education.

Keywords

• Serious games
• medical education
• curriculum
• competence