SimuVersity Medical Center: Pain and Opioid Management Training in Diverse Patient Populations

August 8, 2025 updated by: Medical University of South Carolina
This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the new educational activity/game (a novel, engaging digital-training plus interaction with virtual patients to practice skills) in meeting clinical learning objectives and outcomes compared to traditional didactic (powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case scenarios) approaches to provider and student education and satisfaction.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Management of chronic pain and opioid use/misuse is challenging for clinicians and students, especially when working with diverse and underserved patient populations, and very few low-cost, flexible, highly-engaging, and effective learning resources are available to help the healthcare workforce best learn to manage these unique health concerns. Gamification holds promise as a user-friendly, fun, engaging and effective teaching strategy, especially for healthcare applications. SimuVersity Medical Center is an immersive 3D gaming platform that will engage students and practicing clinicians in a unique and captivating learning experience focused on pain and opioid management in diverse patient groups.

SimuVersity Medical Center is an innovative platform solution to education and training in specialty topics in healthcare. This novel learning platform will permit learners to explore a 3D virtual hospital space and can interact with objects, virtual colleagues/trainers and virtual patients (imbued with artificial intelligence) to learn and practice new clinical skills. The platform is built for ease-of-use with simple character controls that non-game-savvy learners find intuitive and easy. The graphical interface is clean and clear and the software runs on all modern computing platforms. The control intervention consists of traditional powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case studies for review.

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of the new educational activity/game (a novel, engaging digital-training plus interaction with virtual patients to practice skills) in meeting clinical learning objectives and outcomes compared to traditional didactic (powerpoint slide-based training and text-base case scenarios) approaches to provider and student education and satisfaction.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

74

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • South Carolina
      • Charleston, South Carolina, United States, 29425
        • Medical University of South Carolina

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. Ages 18-80 years
  2. English-speaking
  3. Graduate-level health professional students and faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina
  4. Willingness to volunteer to play the new educational game and complete questionnaires regarding satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, value, ease of use and ability to meet learning objectives

Exclusion Criteria:

  1. Age outside the predefined range
  2. Not a student or faculty at MUSC
  3. Not willing or able to participate in the learning activity or complete study related questionnaires.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Other
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Training using AI-powered SimuVersity Training Platform
Students and faculty will receive training on diversity considerations in pain and opioid management via an online gamified platform with AI-powered virtual patients to apply knowledge.
Behavioral: Gamified Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use
Use of a video game-based training platform
Active Comparator: Training using traditional text-base methods
Students and faculty will receive training on diversity considerations in pain and opioid management via written materials and text-base case studies to apply knowledge.
Behavioral: Traditional Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use
Use of a traditional text-based training platform

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Pre-Post Training Knowledge Test
Time Frame: From enrollment to the end of the training and assessment (2 hours later)
Multiple-choice knowledge test on diversity considerations in pain and opioid management
From enrollment to the end of the training and assessment (2 hours later)

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Medical University of South Carolina

Collaborators

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

April 1, 2025

Primary Completion (Actual)

July 31, 2025

Study Completion (Actual)

July 31, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 25, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 30, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

October 2, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

August 11, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 8, 2025

Last Verified

August 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • Pro00137370
  • 1R41DA059281-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

Primary Outcomes

IPD Sharing Time Frame

8/31/2025

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Students and Faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina

IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type

  • ICF

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on None Volunteer

Clinical Trials on Gamified Training in Diversity Considerations in the Management of Pain and Opioid Use

Search Similar Trials

Sponsors and Collaborators

Medical Conditions

Drug Interventions

CROs by country

CROs in Cambodia

Conditions

Rare Diseases

Drug Interventions

Dietary Supplements

Sponsor/Collaborators

Locations

Subscribe