The team of researchers from several different U.S. institutions joined forces to develop a video game to address an issue that at least half of all U.S. patients will encounter in the course of seeking emergency medical treatment — arriving at a facility that is not capable of handling severe trauma. Hoping to improve this situation, the team of researchers have developed a video game to train doctors.

Doctors at said facilities are forced to decide immediately whether a patient needs to be transported to another facility or if they can be treated at the current facility. The video game was designed with that specific scenario in mind as decisions made under this added pressure can be clouded by other distractions. The video game was designed to serve as a reminder of sorts, giving doctors the chance to practice making triage decisions for a virtual patient.

Researchers invited three hundred physicians to take part in the study, asking some of those participants to play a video game depicting a triage scenario where the physicians would offer a step-by-step accounting of protocols in support of their decision-making.

After playing the game, all of the participants, both those who had played the video game and those who had not, were invited to take part in a virtual triage simulation where doctors make triage decisions. The team concluded that those who had played the game prior to the simulation under-triaged less often than those who hadn’t played the video game at all.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.