Abstract

Rates of alcoholism in the United States have remained high despite increased public awareness and efforts to educate people about this disabling disease. Alcoholic patients are sometimes difficult to diagnose and, because of tolerance and dependence, often present a challenge to effectively treat. Negative attitudes toward substance use disorders (SUDs) populations are believed to be important contributors to the low rates of effective identification and management of SUDs by physicians. There is deterioration in attitudes throughout the medical school years by medical students with a natural progression to become increasingly negative toward patients with SUDs. This presents a need to improve the attitudes of medical students toward alcohol-dependent patients which may improve the future healthcare of these patients. Although education interventions may take many forms and medical schools use many different approaches to teaching their students, there is increasing evidence that interactive role-playing simulations improve training effectiveness and boost learning retention rates. The goal of this project is to measure attitudes, using the Medical Condition Regard Scale, of first and second year medical students at University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine before and after playing a novel relapse prevention videogame called Guardian Angel. Results indicated that Guardian Angel proved effective in improving attitudes toward alcoholism in male medical students; while there was no statistically significant improvement in females. Guardian Angel proved effective in improving attitudes toward alcoholism in 2nd year medical students; while there was no statistically significant improvement in 1st year medical students.Medical students found videogames in general to be an effective learning modality but did not agree or strongly agree that Guardian Angel is an effective learning modality. However, the majority of the students found Guardian Angel to have enhanced their understanding of alcoholism and stimulated their interest in learning about alcoholism.