September 9 2017
by Neel Desai, M.D.
Dr. Chris Carroll is a pediatric critical care physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut, Editor of Social Media at CHEST, and a parent of three children. His research interests include the treatment and genetic influences of severe respiratory diseases in children (particularly asthma and bronchiolitis), and the use of new by media by academic clinicians and researchers. He also blogs at the self titled chriscarrollmd.com
In a recent blogpost, Gamification of Medical Education: Choose Your Own Medventure , Dr. Carroll describes how healthcare professionals are using modern day digital platforms in engaging and innovative ways to enhance their medical education. Some examples include: fellows learning ultrasound using Snapchat, nurses learning how to insert NG tubes through YouTube videos, and students learning pathophysiology through blogs and podcasts. One specific way to enhance and engage learners in our digital information age is a technique called “Gamification”.
“Gamification” is a technique used making activities fun as well as beneficial by turning that activity into a game. As per Dr. Carroll’s post:
“Studies have found that gamification increases learner engagement, improves knowledge absorption and retention, and enhances the overall learning experience for all age groups. This strategy applies to medical education as well.”
Dr. Carroll used the gamification technique to create a PALS type choose your own medical adventure (Medventure) recently:
“And I thought, this would be a fantastic tool for medical education! So on a long flight to Alaska, I put a case scenario together using the Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) Guidelines and mapped it out on paper. Then I spent about an hour or so tweeting and linking the tweets.”
The response from the medical community has been overwhelmingly positive and impactful: Per Dr. Carroll, the first scenario had more than 11,000 interactions within the first few days, with hundreds of positive comments from doctors, nurses, and trainees thanking him, and telling him how much they liked them. The overwhelming positive response even led to an post on the popular physician social media site KevinMD.
As a result, his colleague Amy Coopes (@coopesdetat) helped him coin a name & hashtag for them: #ChooseYourOwnMedventure. Since then, he has published four different scenarios and collected them in a Twitter Moment.
For Dr. Chris Caroll’s innovative and engaging use of digital media communication platforms in medical education, as well as his dedication to pediatric critical care, we are pleased to recognize him as our Medical Influencer of the Week.
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