The use of games to improve patient outcomes.

In gerontology and geriatrics, learning often requires both the acquisition of new facts and a change in attitude towards elderly persons. Games, in addition to stimulating a desire to learn, are powerful instruments to change attitudes. This paper introduces games currently being used by the Gateway Geriatric Education Center to teach gerontological and geriatric principles to healthcare providers. It summarizes assessments that have been used to measure the effectiveness of those games to promote learning. Arguments are made that more rigorous methodologies of evaluation for games should be adopted in order to demonstrate the effects of that learning on improved patient outcomes.