Teaching antibiotic stewardship through interaction - a gamified learning approach

Introduction

Medical teaching often focuses on standardized tests instead of applied skills, which regularly leads to frustration when young doctors note a mismatch between what they learned and what is required on the job. Specialized courses are a solution, but we argue that without interactive practice, they risk limiting the long-term sustainability of the knowledge gained.

Goals

We created an elective course on ABS for medical students, substantially increasing the practice students received. We used gamified learning, a chatbot using artificial intelligence, and learning methods such as flashcards to do this. The goal was to create an output-oriented learning experience - where learners apply their gained knowledge - and to study its impact using several tests taken before, during and after the course.

Materials & Methods

We studied students across three runs of an ABS student elective. We assessed factual skills and qualitative aspects, such as perceived security in selecting an antibiotic therapy option. Students were also exposed to various analog games, practicing pattern recognition and reinforcing concepts from the course. Knowledge was further reinforced using flashcards on a spaced repetition schedule. We followed students after the course at three, six, and twelve months.

Results

All 37 enrolled students improved substantially, both on the factual questionnaire (A) and on the perception of their ability on a qualitative (Likert) scale (B). For example, while less than half of the questions on applied therapy aspects were answered correctly before the course, after the course, the mean accuracy increased to over 75%. Also, before, most students were insecure about their antibiotic prescriptions. Afterward, most students felt at least somewhat secure, as assessed on a 5-step Likert scale.

Summary

More dynamic, adaptive, and interactive teaching methods can empower medical students and young doctors to actively use the knowledge gained throughout the course. We demonstrated that this can be implemented in infectious diseases, leading to solid operating algorithms, long-term memory, and safety when prescribing antibiotics.