Clinical trial NCT02857348: A Trial of a Video Game Intervention to Recalibrate Physician Heuristics
Official title: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Video Game Intervention to Recalibrate Physician Heuristics
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Wounds and Injuries
Keywords: decision making
heuristics
Lead sponsor: University of Pittsburgh
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Carnegie Mellon University
First posted: 2016-08-05
Enrollment: 368
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: The objective of this study is to compare the efficacy of a video game designed to recalibrate physician heuristics in trauma triage with a standard educational program.

Detailed description: Treatment at trauma centers improves outcomes for patients with moderate-to-severe injuries. Accordingly, professional organizations, state authorities, and the federal government have endorsed the systematic triage and transfer of these patients to trauma centers either directly from the field or after evaluation at a non-trauma center. Nonetheless, between 30 to 40% of patients with moderate-to-severe injuries still only receive treatment at non-trauma centers, so-called under-triage. Most of this under-triage occurs because of physician decisions (rather than first-responder decisions). Existing efforts to change physician decision making focus primarily on knowledge of clinical practice guidelines and attitudes towards the guidelines. These strategies ignores the growing consensus that decision making reflects both knowledge as well as intuitive judgments (heuristics). Heuristics, mental short cuts based on pattern recognition, drive the majority of decision making. The investigators have developed an adventure video game (Night Shift) to serve as a novel method of recalibrating physician heuristics in trauma triage and will compare its efficacy with a standard educational program.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Physicians who care for adult patients in the Emergency Department.
* Physicians who work at a non-trauma center.
* Physicians who work at a Level III/IV trauma center.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Physicians who work at a Level I/II trauma center.
* Physicians who do not practice in the US.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Under-triage rate
timeFrame: After completion of the intervention
Secondary outcomes:
measure: The effect of cognitive load on the under-triage rate
timeFrame: After completion of the intervention
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Pittsburgh
name: Deepika Mohan, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Mohan D, Rosengart MR, Fischhoff B, Angus DC, Wallace DJ, Farris C, Yealy DM, Barnato AE. Using incentives to recruit physicians into behavioral trials: lessons learned from four studies. BMC Res Notes. 2017 Dec 28;10(1):776. doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-3101-z.
citation: Mohan D, Farris C, Fischhoff B, Rosengart MR, Angus DC, Yealy DM, Wallace DJ, Barnato AE. Efficacy of educational video game versus traditional educational apps at improving physician decision making in trauma triage: randomized controlled trial. BMJ. 2017 Dec 12;359:j5416. doi: 10.1136/bmj.j5416.
citation: Mohan D, Rosengart MR, Fischhoff B, Angus DC, Farris C, Yealy DM, Wallace DJ, Barnato AE. Testing a videogame intervention to recalibrate physician heuristics in trauma triage: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. BMC Emerg Med. 2016 Nov 11;16(1):44. doi: 10.1186/s12873-016-0108-z.