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Playing to Care: Games as Empathy Development Tools in Healthcare Education
Key insights
7 takeaways- 01Digital games offer a viable pedagogical tool for developing clinical empathy in healthcare students, functioning similarly to narrative medicine by fostering cognitive empathy and the intention to help patients.See it on page 1
- 02A literature review of 604 publications identified 36 relevant studies, revealing that while commercial games like 'Depression Quest' and 'Spiritfarer' show potential for empathy development, only one game has been experimentally proven to achieve this outcome.See it on page 6
- 03Clinical empathy is best served by cognitive empathy—a detached understanding of a patient's state—rather than affective empathy, which involves mirroring a patient's emotional distress.See it on page 2
- 04Serious games designed for healthcare education currently underutilize effective game design elements found in commercial titles, particularly regarding the exploration of loss and narrative depth.See it on page 1
- 05Walking simulators are identified as a highly suitable genre for healthcare education because they facilitate the narrative competence required for medical professionals to interpret and act on patient stories.See it on page 1
- 06Integrating commercial games into medical curricula faces significant hurdles, including a lack of measurable learning outcomes, potential for inaccurate content, and the risk that players may perceive the experience as too fictional for real-world application.See it on page 12
- 07Effective empathy-building games must balance player agency with narrative; for example, the game 'SPENT' failed to increase empathy in some contexts because it removed the player's ability to control the character's situation.See it on page 12
Summary
Press Start Playing to Care Playing to Care: Games as Empathy Development Tools in Healthcare Education University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom University of Dundee, United Kingdom University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom Empathy displayed by healthcare practitioners is linked to improved treatment outcomes for patients.
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