Educational games for mental health professionals

Background In traditional didactic teaching, the learner has a passive role, digesting the knowledge presented by the teacher. Stimulating and active teaching processes may be better at instilling information than more pedestrian approaches. Games involving repetition, reinforcement, association and use of multiple senses have been proposed as part of experiential learning. Objectives To assess the effects of educational games on the knowledge and clinical skill of mental health professionals compared to the effects of standard teaching approaches. Search strategy We performed electronic searches of AMED (1998-November 2005), British Nursing Index (November 2005), Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2005), Cochrane Schizophrenia Group Trials Register (November 2005), CINAHL (November 2005) EMBASE (November 2005), Educational Resources Information Centre on CSA (1966-November 2005), MEDLINE (November 2005), PsycINFO (November 2005). We also searched references of all selected articles and contacted authors of included trials for more information. Selection criteria Randomised controlled trials comparing any educational game aiming at increasing knowledge and/or skills with a standard educational approach for mental health professionals. Data collection and analysis We extracted data independently and analysed on an intention-to-treat basis. We analysed the individual person data using fixed effect Peto Odds Ratio (OR) calculated the 95% confidence intervals (CI). If appropriate, the number needed to treat (NNT) or number needed to harm (NNH) was estimated. For continuous data, we calculated weighted mean differences. Main results We identified one trial (n=34) of an educational game for mental health nursing students of only a few hours follow up. For an outcome we arbitrarily defined ('no academically important improvement [a 10% improvement in scores]') those allocated to educational games fared considerably better than students in the standard education techniques group (OR 0.06 CI 0.01 to 0.27, NNT 3 CI 2 to 4). On average those in the games group scored six more points than the control students on a test of questions relevant to psychosis set to the standard of the mental health nursing curriculum of the day (WMD 6 CI 2.63 to 9.37). Authors' conclusions Current limited evidence suggests educational games could help mental health students gain more points in their tests, especially if they have left revision to the last minute. This salient study should be refined and repeated.