Application of the principles of gamification to facilitate acquisition of self-management skills in young people with long-term medical conditions

Wilson, Andrew and McDonagh, J. (2013) Application of the principles of gamification to facilitate acquisition of self-management skills in young people with long-term medical conditions. In: 7th European Conference on Games Based Learning, ECGBL 2013, 3 October 2013 through 4 October 2013, Porto; Portugal.

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Abstract

With improvements in health care children diagnosed with long term medical conditions are now more likely to live longer with the possibility that their condition will follow them into adulthood. As the young person grows older they will eventually have to transfer their care to the adult setting. Failure to plan and coordinate this has been associated with poorer health outcomes and disruption to their care. Transition planning encourages both health literacy and health promoting behaviours in an age and developmentally appropriate way. In order to gauge the attainment of these skills assessment tools have been developed. They all have items of commonality (understanding the condition, self management, adherence to treatment and communication) but many are disease specific and address items that are specific to their country of origin (i.e. medical insurance). A series of transitional readiness checklists have been developed at Birmingham Children's Hospital which are more focused to young people in the UK. The domains they measure include knowledge, self-advocacy, transferring to adult care, health and lifestyle, activities of daily living, school and vocation, leisure and managing emotions. Engaging and encouraging young people to work towards attaining the required skills and the assessment of their competency in them beyond the health care setting remains a challenge in every day clinical practice. The processes would therefore benefit from a more objective assessment for the doctor and structured in way to be more fun for the young person. Gamification is the term used to describe the use of game mechanics in non-game contexts with the aim of trying to improving engagement and motivation. In this paper we will discuss how the dynamics of gamification (progress, feedback and behaviour) and game mechanics can be mapped to the self-care and self management skills associated with Birmingham Children's Hospital transitional care checklists. This will include how badges can be used to indicate a young person's progression towards attaining increasing levels of knowledge for example about their condition, the effects of their condition on their body as well as improving understanding of their treatments and any side effects associated with it. Other examples will include how trophies can be used to indicate successful understanding of a series of concepts at a particular developmental stage in a young person. This paper focuses on discussing the application of gamification to the Birmingham Children's Hospital transitional care checklists. However this initial framework will give both clinicians and health care workers an insight into the use of gamification in a health care setting and provide a basis for application to other areas of knowledge and skills acquisition where engagement in the processes can be challenging.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Dates:
DateEvent
2013Published
Uncontrolled Keywords: Adolescent, Chronic conditions, Gamification, Self-care, Transition, Adolescent, Chronic conditions, Gamification, Self-care, Transition, Employment, Health care, Hospitals, Education
Subjects: CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science
Divisions: Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > School of Computing and Digital Technology
Depositing User: Hussen Farooq
Date Deposited: 27 Jul 2016 12:13
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2022 15:47
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/2556

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