Serious game for clinical reasoning teaching in musculo-skeletal physiotherapy

SCALENEo (Smart ClinicAL rEasoning iN physiothErapy) had two main objectives. 1) To disseminate an innovative learning tool in teaching physiotherapy, through a serious game dedicated to clinical...

SCALENEo (Smart ClinicAL rEasoning iN physiothErapy) had two main objectives. 1) To disseminate an innovative learning tool in teaching physiotherapy, through a serious game dedicated to clinical reasoning. We consider the serious game as an innovative initiative with significant potential impact in initial or continuing physical therapy education, of which clinical reasoning is a fundamental ingredient. 2) To take advantage of the possibilities offered by information and communication technologies to develop not only a paper version of the serious game, but rather a complete online ecosystem for teaching and learning clinical reasoning in physiotherapy in the musculoskeletal field. In particular we aimed at implementing an online version of the serious game that could be played either in small groups or by a player alone, with an individualized feedback.

Obviously there were activities related to project management : meetings (general or topical) and application to an ethics committee to validate our research protocol. Several activities are related to the serious game development, both in paper or online versions : validating the graphic charter, the rules of the game and the technical needs, creating the clinical cases, printing the serious game and implementing it online, implementing the database. Dissemination activities were crucial in SCALENEo : the serious game has been presented and used in schools and workshops, either organised by the consortium or in external events where we were invited. These activities were also the occasion to teste the serious game and collect feedbacks in view of continuous improvement. To reach a wider audience, we also created and managed a Facebook page and a Youtube channel together with the project website. A last activity was also the dissemination of newsletters and the writing of a scientific article presenting one particularly innovative aspect of the project: The algorithm scoring clinical reasoning.