Thursday, May 22, 2014

When Doctors Play This Game, You Get Better Medical Care

Doctors are required to keep current on best medical practices, but those efforts all too often often don't do a thing to improve patient care. But what if the class is a game — one that lets you compete against other doctors and show off your smarts?

Plus you get funny emails. Oh, and your patients get better, too.

The game combines goofy stock photos with serious questions on blood pressure management.
That's the gist of an online game tested at eight Boston-area hospitals to see if it could improve treatment of high blood pressure by getting practitioners to follow recommended treatment guidelines.

Patients of the doctors and nurses who played the game over the course of a year got their blood pressure under control faster than those whose primary care providers were told to read educational materials instead, a "modest but significant" improvement, the researchers say. The results were published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

Link to full article here.

Originally posted in NPR.

No comments:

Post a Comment