KOAGULANDO: A FUN GAME TO LEARN ABOUT THE BLEEDING CASCADE

Objectives: Koagulando is a game build for mobile phones to enhance the learning process of hemostasis. Materials and methods: The game was built as a mobile app for Android. It is free and has an easy game interface. The language is Portuguese, and the intellectual content is totally from the author. A game designer enterprise developed the codes and arts for the game. Results: The game has three levels to simulate the bleeding cascade pathways. The student plays as the coagulation factors in a futuristic scenario. The factors act like secret agents in a mission. Windows with the level objectives are displayed for the understanding of the level. After finishing the game, the student has to answer a short quiz. Discussion: In Brazil, among the various schools of medicine, the official curriculum is traditionally divided into three moments that can be different from school to school but shares the same parts: One cycle called the Basic module where the students have disciplines like anatomy, physiology, and others that are common among all the health sciences; the Clinical module which includes the specific medical topics and the medical internship, a practical rotation scheme. The physiology of hemostasis is one of the most challenging topics in the Basic module. The complex theme, the importance in the medical field, and the short time reserved to its comprehension by traditional medical courses make teaching a colossal challenge to teachers.KOAGULANDO is a game developed exclusively to learn about the bleeding cascade using a mix of platform videogame and technical comments about the hemostasis phenomenon. The proposal is a free game for mobile phones or computers, using gamification as a facilitator about understanding the coagulation pathway. To my best knowledge, the only computer game designed specifically for Hematology teaching is the Hemoquest, a game developed by this author in partnership with a designer available only for Android. A quick search in the App Store for IOS and Google Store for Android using the descriptors “hematology,”“coagulation,”“bleeding,”“leukemia,”“transfusión,”“anemia, “oncology”did not found any specific game for educational purposes. The same search in Portuguese found only the Hemoquest. In the author's experience, using Hemoquest since 2019 in the Federal University of Paraiba, as a complementary tool in his Hematology course, the student adherence is almost 100%, with a significant percentage of acceptance among them. The major obstacle is the students Access to mobile phones and technology. Conclusion: Gamification can be a powerful tool to enhance the learning of complex topics in Hematology