Abstract
Background:
Game jams (events to create educational games) could provide an engaging learning environment for cultural safety training of Millennial medical students. We aimed to determine whether medical student participation in a game jam on cultural safety is more effective than more conventional education in changing self-reported intended patient-oriented behavior and confidence in transcultural skills.
Methods:
A parallel-group, two-arm RCT compared game jam participation with a standard lesson plus a workshop on cultural safety. The intervention was a game jam to create an educational game on cultural safety and the control was a standard lesson plus an interactive workshop on cultural safety. Stratified randomization allocated the participants to the intervention and control groups.
Results:
Some 531 students completed the baseline survey and were randomised. Game jam participants did not have better intended culturally safe behaviour than did participants in the lesson and interactive workshop (difference in means: 0.08 95%CI 0.05 - 0.23). The cluster-adjusted Mantel-Haenszel approach confirmed that game jam learning was associated with higher transcultural self-efficacy immediately after the intervention (wtOR 2.03 95%CI 1.25 - 3.30). Separately, both game jam and the lesson plus workshop showed effectiveness in terms of the primary and secondary outcomes.
Conclusions:
Game jam learning improved cultural safety intentions of Colombian medical students to a similar degree as did a carefully designed lecture and workshop. The game jam was also associated with positive change in participant transcultural self-efficacy. We encourage further research to explore the impact of cultural safety training on population health, ideally using patient-related outcomes.
