Game-Based Learning for Health Professionals Working in Cancer Care

Abstract

Game-Based Learning corresponds to a learning methodology supported by the use of games to represent a realworld problem in a playful way, while stimulating the interest and engagement of the target audience. In the health area, it can be used to assist in the training of students and professionals, simulating and anticipating scenarios that are likely to be experienced in their professional practices, with the difference of not putting the lives of real patients at risk. This work presents a game-based learning application for health professionals working in cancer care. Following medical guidelines, it focuses on maintaining the health of patients with breast cancer, by monitoring the adverse effects arising from treatment therapies and choosing ways to mitigate them using medications, transfusions and food. In addition, following the data-driven paradigm, an editor was also designed and implemented as a tool associated with the game to register input data (i.e., real clinical cases of patients) and feed the game input database independently and unlimitedly, allowing the expansion of execution scenarios and the construction of a rich input database to stimulate player education.