Frontiers in Public Health (Oct 2015)
Development of students’ eHealth, mHealth and serious games expertise in health behavior change during health and social studies
Abstract
Background Markets of digital applications and serious games for health and well-being are currently growing. It is even said that health is going to be a “megatrend” along with mobile gaming. According this there is a pressure to involve new working methods in health care and social services. Applying digital solutions in health care and social services demands knowledge and skills to combine behavior change theory to eHealth and mHealth practices. The certain expertise is needed: how to assign appropriate applications to be used within evidence based clinical practice? And also, how to educate health and social care students towards it. Eventually professionals need to the change their working culture and working methods from experts to coaching. To develop expertise in eHealth and mHealth requires that these themes are included in health care and social services studies. How to offer experiences of eHealth, mHealth and serious games to students during their studies? How to involve digitalization as a part teaching? Students have lots of ideas – how to put them to use? In the poster there will be described and presented eHealth and mHealth expertise development cases in health and social studies at bachelor and master levels at the JAMK University of Applied Sciences Jyväskylä. Description Studies in eHealth and mHealth expertise consists of three types of cases. The 1st cases take place in bachelor studies during 1st and 2nd academic year where main focus is learning behavior change theories (e.g. transtheoretical model of changes, health belief model, empowerment-based counseling, mental health promotion and motivational interviewing). Along with studying theory, students get to familiarize with serious games, eHealth and mHealth applications. Students are encouraged to find and test applications which support patients’ mental well-being, self-management and behavior change process. Case: Mental health promotion project: The idea of this project is to play regulary chosen serious games during the mental health-, addiction- and crisis nursing course (6 ect). At the end of the course students filled a questionnaire to find out: How to utilize gamifigation and serious games at the future? - results - ideas etc. 2nd cases take place in 3rd and 4th academic year in bachelor studies. The aim of the 2nd cases is to enhance critical thinking in relation to eHealth, mHealth and serious game applications. Hand in hand with evidence-based practice students will assess applications and applications background theories (example behavior change theories and techniques). Case: Mobile technology and gamification in client-centered work within social services and health care (5ect) 3rd cases are located during 5th and 6th academic year during the master studies. Students practice to design eHealth, mHealth or serious games intervention protocols. Students are able to enhance expertise in implementing and using evidence based digital solutions in social and health care clinical settings. Case: Planning and implementing evidence based digital services in the course of Health Promotion Methods (5 ect) Conclusion New clienthoods require new ways to work in health care and social services at the future. Professionals’ expertise in different kind of digital environments is essential. Expertise should be a combination of evidence-based practice, behavior change theories and the practical experiences of using different kind of applications and they should also overcome of the possible fear of unknown and technological challenges. These are the reasons why eHealth, mHealth and serious games should be involved to curriculum in health care and social services studies. When the expertise has started to develop during the studies by varied methods, the interest and motivation to utilize digital solutions could be increased. Skills to critically assess various digital applications in the aspect of behavior change theories also increase the quality of evidence based practice in health care and social services.
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