uMed: Your Choice - Conception of a Digital Game to Enhance Medical Ethics Training

Abstract

In this contribution, we present the conception of the serious moral game uMed: Your Choice for the training of medical students’ moral sensitivity and resoluteness. First, we offer an overview of the moral competences that we aim to train through the game: an empathic concern for relevant groups; an awareness of one’s susceptibility to biases and stress, moral schemas and scripts for automatized sensitivity under time pressure; a sensitivity to attitudes of moral disengagement; and skills for speaking up about ethical issues. Second, we present the educational game mechanisms and contents that we have selected and combined to achieve the desired learning outcomes: playing an intern at a clinic, learners deal with several cases, in which they have to interact with patients, patients’ relatives, and co-workers. Their decisions, including the way they communicate, have immediate as well as delayed consequences, and players receive constant feedback in terms of three value categories (empathy, integrity, efficiency). Third, we discuss how we employ the game within our study program. We close with a discussion of a possible critique of our design and with an outlook on the further design process.