Gamification educational intervention improves pediatric nurses' comfort and speed drawing up code-dose epinephrine

Purpose: Drawing up weight-based doses of epinephrine is a vital skill for pediatric nurses; however, nonintensive care unit (ICU) nurses may not routinely perform this skill and may not be as efficient or comfortable doing so during pediatric resuscitations. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a gamification program on non-ICU pediatric nurses' knowledge and skills regarding epinephrine for pediatric cardiac arrest. Design and methods: Comfort and time to draw up three doses of epinephrine during out-of-ICU in-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest were measured pre- and post- a gamification-centered educational intervention. Results: Nursing comfort improved from 2.93 +/- 1.90 to 6.68 +/- 1.46 out of 10 (mean difference 3.6 +/- 2.1, p < 0.001). Overall time to draw up three doses of epinephrine decreased after the intervention by an average of 27.1 s (p = 0.019). The number of nurses who could complete the task in under 2 min improved from 23% to 59% (p = 0.031). Conclusions: At baseline fewnon-ICU nurses could drawupmultipleweight-based doses of epinephrine in under two minutes. A gamification simulation-based educational intervention improved pediatric non-ICU nurses' comfort and speed drawing up epinephrine. Practice implications: Wide-spread implementation of gamification-centered educational initiatives could result in faster epinephrine administration and improved mortality rates from in-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest. (c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the impact of a gamification program on the knowledge and skills of non-ICU pediatric nurses regarding epinephrine use during pediatric cardiac arrest. The results showed that the gamification-centered educational intervention improved nurses' comfort and speed in drawing up epinephrine.