SimuVersity Medical Center: Pain and Opioid Management Training in Diverse Patient Populations

NCT ID: NCT06624124

Last Updated: 2025-08-11

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 74 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2025-04-01
• Study Completion Date: 2025-07-31

Brief Summary

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the new educational activity/game (a novel, engaging digital-training plus interaction with virtual patients to practice skills) in meeting clinical learning objectives and outcomes compared to traditional didactic (powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case scenarios) approaches to provider and student education and satisfaction.

Detailed Description

Management of chronic pain and opioid use/misuse is challenging for clinicians and students, especially when working with diverse and underserved patient populations, and very few low-cost, flexible, highly-engaging, and effective learning resources are available to help the healthcare workforce best learn to manage these unique health concerns. Gamification holds promise as a user-friendly, fun, engaging and effective teaching strategy, especially for healthcare applications. SimuVersity Medical Center is an immersive 3D gaming platform that will engage students and practicing clinicians in a unique and captivating learning experience focused on pain and opioid management in diverse patient groups.

SimuVersity Medical Center is an innovative platform solution to education and training in specialty topics in healthcare. This novel learning platform will permit learners to explore a 3D virtual hospital space and can interact with objects, virtual colleagues/trainers and virtual patients (imbued with artificial intelligence) to learn and practice new clinical skills. The platform is built for ease-of-use with simple character controls that non-game-savvy learners find intuitive and easy. The graphical interface is clean and clear and the software runs on all modern computing platforms. The control intervention consists of traditional powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case studies for review.

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the new educational activity/game (a novel, engaging digital-training plus interaction with virtual patients to practice skills) in meeting clinical learning objectives and outcomes compared to traditional didactic (powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case scenarios) approaches to provider and student education and satisfaction.

Conditions

None Volunteer

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: OTHER
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Training using AI-powered SimuVersity Training Platform

Students and faculty will receive training on diversity considerations in pain and opioid management via an online gamified platform with AI-powered virtual patients to apply knowledge.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Gamified Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Use of a video game-based training platform

Training using traditional text-base methods

Students and faculty will receive training on diversity considerations in pain and opioid management via written materials and text-base case studies to apply knowledge.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Traditional Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Use of a traditional text-based training platform

Interventions

Gamified Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use

Use of a video game-based training platform

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Traditional Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use

Use of a traditional text-based training platform

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

1. Ages 18-80 years

2. English-speaking

3. Graduate-level health professional students and faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina

4. Willingness to volunteer to play the new educational game and complete questionnaires regarding satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, value, ease of use and ability to meet learning objectives

Exclusion Criteria

1. Age outside the predefined range

2. Not a student or faculty at MUSC

3. Not willing or able to participate in the learning activity or complete study related questionnaires.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 80 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

NIH

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Medical University of South Carolina

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Locations

Medical University of South Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina, United States

Countries

United States

Provided Documents

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

1R41DA059281-01A1

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

View Link

Pro00137370

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id