ER Simulation Program

The simulation is written to run on PCs. To download it for your own use, click here, then Save to your computer. Once you have done that, Unzip the files. Inside the ER Simulation folder, open the file labeled TorqueDemo.exe. The simulation home page will be displayed. You can run the simulation in one of four modes, depending on whether you check or uncheck Option A (interruption) and Option C (cycling).

In order to learn how to play the game, click on “Start Practice.” (Note: If the program fails to open, or if it crashes during play, you likely don’t have sufficient computational and/or graphics capability.)

The simulation opens to the first room of the practice scenario. To begin, press the Up Arrow, which will move you forward and will open the first dialogue box. The practice simulation will provide you with the tools you need to run the ER simulation and will give you practice at navigating the environment. The instructions will be in the form of clues that you'll pick up as you move through the simulation, and the nature of the game will be explained as you go along.

After you have gained sufficient experience through the Practice simulation, you can return to the menu on the home page and enter the actual ER Simulation, by clicking on “Start Mission”. You’ll be asked for your name, and you’ll need to use a unique character string each time you run the program.

Your job will be to collect information regarding the three ER cases and to integrate the information into a full understanding of each case. You will have a total of 100 minutes from the beginning of the game until it's over. During that time, you want to follow each of the cases as far as possible. (Note: The additional tests given to participants in our study are available from Nancy Franklin)

Each case will appear in its own separate physical space, each of which holds multiple clues about a given patient. For each patient, you will move through 7 rooms to pick up clues, with 5 clues in each room. Note: We adapted the Detective Simulation with ER-related content for this study, using graphics typical of first-person shooter games and not typical of Emergency Departments. We invited players to imagine that after a major storm that had damaged the hospital’s Emergency suite, they were temporarily seeing patients in a set of outbuildings adjacent to the hospital.

You should keep an eye out for how clues may relate to each other, embellish each other, or contradict each other. You will have a clock counting down as you work on the cases, and the program will exit when you've timed out, so stay focused and move as quickly as you can. The clock will appear in the lower left hand corner, so you can keep track of your progress. As you play the game, it's very important that you move back and forth between ALL THREE scenes so that you keep yourself at about the same level of progress through each of them. It's up to you to move from case to case without being prompted. You need to remember to do that ongoingly, throughout the game.

You will always be told which object you must click on next. Clicking on an item before it is available will result in an error. You can always go back and click on an object you had inspected previously, and you will be given the same information as before.

Good luck!

Note: This program is registered with Creative Commons. You may modify and use the program for non-commercial purposes only.