Increasing surgical safety through serious gaming: "Nobody is perfect, but a team can be."

Safety is one of the major issues for surgical teams. Game technology could be a means to increase dialogue and raise awareness on safety within and between surgery teams. A participatory design process, where end-users are involved in the development process of such a "safety-game', can foster safety awareness and acceptance of the game as intervention. Involving the target group at an early stage also enables game designers to find a balance between the dimensions of reality, meaning and play of the game. In this paper we present the first steps of a participatory design approach for 3D-serious games that aim to stimulate learning and development of team oriented working in surgical teams. Using a serious game to motivate or educate is not new, but consciously using the design phase of such a game to stimulate both motivation and learning is. In this paper we report on the first phase of the project, the design phase and the first user-tests. The findings lead us to the tentative conclusion that learning, motivation and the intention to alter behaviour that should lead to less human induced errors or casualties are positively influenced.