The educational impact of a serious game for airway management skills of medical trainees.

backgroundEffective airway management is essential for patient safety across prehospital, perioperative, and critical care settings. Traditional training, largely based on lectures and brief skills stations, may be insufficient to develop structured decision-making under time pressure. Serious games have emerged as an active learning strategy that can complement conventional instruction. This study evaluated the educational impact of PLAN A, a tabletop serious game, as an adjunct to airway management training for novice medical trainees.

methodsIn this prospective randomized pilot trial, 34 novice trainees, including medical interns and first-year residents with no prior formal airway management training, were randomized 1:1 to an intervention group or a control group. All participants received a 30-minute didactic lecture and a 40-minute manikin-based simulation session. The intervention group additionally completed a 40-minute PLAN A session, in which players managed progressively complex airway scenarios using card-based instruments and strategies aligned with established algorithms. The primary outcome was performance on a written case-based assessment consisting of six clinical vignettes with a maximum total score of 18 points, administered immediately before and after training. Scores were analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-rank and Mann-Whitney U tests, with p < 0.05 considered statistically significant.

trial registrationNot applicable.

resultsAll 34 participants completed the pre- and post-training assessments. Baseline performance was low in both groups. The intervention group achieved a median pre-test score of 4.5, whereas the control group achieved a median pre-test score of 5.0. After training, both groups showed significant improvement from baseline. The intervention group improved from a median of 4.5 to 10.0, and the control group improved from a median of 5.0 to 10.0, with p < 0.001 for both within-group comparisons. Post-intervention total scores did not differ significantly between groups. Item-level analysis showed overall pre- versus post-training improvement across the six clinical scenarios, while group-specific gains varied by case.

conclusionsPLAN A appears to be a feasible, low-cost, and acceptable educational adjunct for airway management training in novice learners. In this small randomized pilot study, adding PLAN A to standard airway training did not result in statistically significant between-group differences in total knowledge outcomes, and the findings should therefore be interpreted as hypothesis-generating. Larger, adequately powered studies with longitudinal follow-up are needed to determine whether serious games such as PLAN A improve long-term knowledge retention, transfer to simulation and clinical performance, and patient-centered outcomes.