Playful Simulations Rather Than Serious Games: Medical Simulation as a Cultural Practice
Abstract
Medical simulation has historically been studied in terms of the delivery of learning outcomes or the social construction of knowledge. Consequently, simulation-based medical education has been researched primarily in terms of the transfer of skills or the reproduction of professional communities of practice. We make a case for studying simulation-based medical education as a cultural practice, situating it within a history of gaming and simulation, and which, by virtue of distinctive aesthetics, does not simply teach skills or reproduce professional practices but rather transforms how medicine can be made sense of. Three concepts from the field of game studies—play, narrative, and simulation—are deployed to interpret an ethnographic study of hospital-based simulation centers and describe underreported phenomena, including the cooperative work involved in maintaining a fictional world, the narrative conventions by which medical intervention are portrayed, and the political consequences of simulating the division of labor.
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Biographies
Caroline Pelletier is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Education, London, with research interests in the relationship between technology and subjectivity. She has written on the relationship between games, learning, and education as well as contemporary continental aesthetic philosophy. Her work currently focuses on medical simulation and how this can be interpreted and developed using approaches from cultural studies.
Roger Kneebone is a professor of surgical education at the Imperial College, London. His work builds on educational theory and practice to explore relationships between the biomedical sciences, the craft of surgery and the humanities and social sciences. He leads a research group on clinical simulation that brings together clinicians, educationalists, computer scientists, psychologists, social scientists, design engineers, and experts from the visual and performing arts.
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Article first published online: January 27, 2015
Issue published: June 2016
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