Using serious gaming to improve the safety of central venous catheter placement: A post-mortem analysis

Central venous catheter related complications are a large burden on our healthcare system. Many of these complications can be prevented by the use of proper technique. One methodology to aid in the teaching nontechnical aspects of procedures, serious games, has not been utilized in our field. The authors therefore set out to design a serious game aimed at teaching proper central venous catheter placement. The objective of this manuscript is to examine the challenges encountered while designing and executing our serious gaming trial. Ultimately, they found their game to be an effective teaching tool, although the game development phase of our study was long. The authors therefore concluded that serious gaming is an effective tool for teaching proper technique for the placement of central venous catheters.