Serious Play in the Virtual World: Can We Use Games to Train Young Doctors?

In summary, serious games and virtual reality offer great promise to radically alter the way we teach and acquire medical knowledge. However, before we see widespread use of games in medical curricula, several hurdles need to be overcome. The most important of these is to ensure that game developers and medical educators meet and interact to start exploring the possibilities for developing high-quality, serious games. FIGURE 1 “Hurry, call for help!” (Anesthesia residents in a full-scale operating room simulator.) Footnotes Cor J. Kalkman, MD, PhD, is Professor of Anesthesiology, Division of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands.