How do you stimulate trainee surgeons to train their skills more often?

A trainee surgeon must practice on a simulator for a least 200 hours per year to optimise his or her surgery skills. University Medical Centre Groningen, in the Netherlands, has a skills lab full of simulators – but trainees were making too little use of them.

The fun of Angry Birds

Henk ten Cate Hoedemaker, a surgeon at UMCG, noticed that his colleagues were spending too little time in front of the simulator screens, but played games such as Angry Birds enthusiastically on their smartphones. He decided to investigate whether he could combine the educational aspect of the simulator with the fun of these games.

Pioneering

“I didn’t know anything about serious games, so I started looking online for someone to help me,” he says. “After a bit of Googling I came across a news item about Grendel Games winning an award for their serious games. I gave them a call, and a week later I was standing on their doorstep. They showed me a range of games, and the more I learnt, the more enthusiastic I became. We decided to embark on this adventure together. It was truly pioneering, as we had to still find everything out, from organising the funding to making a sales plan.”