The PlayDecide Patient Safety game: A “serious game” to discuss medical professionalism in relation to patient safety

Abstract

Background: Healthcare organisations have a responsibility for ensuring safe care and that governance of workplace settings creates a culture that supports good professional practice. In Ireland, and internationally, healthcare errors and incidents are frequently under-reported(1-3). Common barriers to reporting include fear, deferred responsibility, and a belief that reporting will not result in any changes(2-4). It is necessary to build shared understanding that reporting improves service quality, and aids professional development. To facilitate this, we adapted the PlayDecide “serious game”(5) for use by multidisciplinary healthcare teams, via an inclusive co-design process involving patient representatives, academic researchers, hospital staff, and state actors. The PlayDecide: Patient Safety (PPS) game employs an embedded learning approach, presenting real-world case stories of events and incidents, incorporating the perspectives of healthcare professionals and patients. Players are tasked with exchanging and discussing perspectives and information, then working towards a shared group policy position around error reporting and patient safety. Aims and objectives: This workshop aims to familiarise attendees in using the PPS game, with the objective of improving awareness of good professionalism and driving increased reporting, as well as encouraging them to use the game with teams at their own institutions. Format: The workshop will run for 90 minutes, incorporating a full PPS game session, preceded by a brief introduction, and followed by open feedback discussion. Part 1 – Opening session (15min): Introductions and opening presentation (EM), description of the PPS game, and purpose of the workshop session (KE, SM). Part 2 – PlayDecide: Patient Safety game (50min): Attendees will play the game in facilitated groups of 4-8 participants, over 3 phases: Information gathering, Discussion, and Group Response Formulation. In the first phase, participants read and select Story Cards and summarise them for the group. This process is repeated for Information Cards and Issue Cards. In the second phase, the group discusses the emerging issues relating to patient safety, organising their cards into clusters around specific themes. During the third and final phase, informed by the discussion, the participants seek a consensus reflecting their group’s policy on patient safety and error reporting. Part 3 – Open feedback discussion (25min): Participants will discuss their experiences from the PPS game session and discuss possible strategies for its inclusion into interdisciplinary learning and professional development initiatives. Target audience: People working in, and researching, patient safety and those interested in supporting interdisciplinary learning. Learnings / take away: i) Attendees will gain understanding of the ways that structured discussions, presented in the “serious game” format, can help diverse groups to share perspectives and agree on a mutually acceptable policy position on error reporting and patient safety. ii) The workshop will give attendees insight into the utility of PPS game as a way of creating open discussions to help build shared cultures around good professionalism and error reporting.