Immersive Virtual Reality to Learn Triage: A Serious Game to Be Prepared to Prehospital Massive Casualty Management (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Recent terrorist attacks in France highlight a weakness in massive casualties management and advocate for simulation-based education to improve the whole process. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to describe both the conception and the production of Traumasims, a serious game (SG) dedicated to on-scene triage in case of massive casualties. METHODS A group of 14 experts in prehospital care as well as emergency and trauma surgery co-produced an SG with Medusims: Traumasims. Clinical benchmarks were identified by the expert panel. Features of high-fidelity simulation-based education were applied to improve the learning of these clinical benchmarks. The SG thus integrates feedback at the end of each scenario, the repetition of scenarii, increasing degrees of difficulty, and individualized teaching. Traumasims was designed according to principles of virtual reality for education purposes: training and assessment. RESULTS Using 3-D real-time video game technology, trainees are in the position of a doctor organizing a casualty collection point (CCP). Immersion is guaranteed by first-person gaming and interaction with caregivers and wounded avatars. To simulate victims, 48 avatars were produced based on real cases, individually tested and care-dependent evolutive. By varying numbers of caregivers and victims, trainees experienced scenarii of massive casualties with increasing difficulty. A personal debriefing was integrated at the end of each simulation. This debriefing allows for an individualized learning curve for each trainee. CONCLUSIONS The development of Traumasims involved a collaborative platform with interdisciplinary actors from the French Military Health Service (FMHS) and its emergency health-care system. This SG was designed to meet the simulation training needs highlighted by recent terrorist attacks. CLINICALTRIAL none