Discovering the positive values of care in the first person through play. This is the goal of an activity that the group ATLANTES del Institute for Culture and Society to some thirty students from the University of Navarra. With this activity, researcher Carla Reigada presented a pioneering pilot program for social intervention in palliative care. 

The game includes tests related to audiovisual material, role-playing and various enigmas to solve. "In this circuit of self-directed learning, the protagonists are the participants: they can build their own knowledge about the value of care and, specifically, about palliative care as a human right," says Reigada. 

agreement According to the researcher, one of the aims of proposal is to debunk myths about palliative care discipline: "Palliative care is hardly associated with positive terms such as compassion, dignity, quality of life and well-being. We want to challenge academics - the future leaders of our society - to change their perception of the care of vulnerable people.

Interdisciplinary approach

Through this pilot programme, the researcher team is studying whether gamification can bring about this change. Before, during and after participation, the positive values that students perceive about accompanying a person in need of physical, psychological, social and spiritual/existential care are evaluated, as well as the empathy generated among the young people.

"This will allow us to create a model or prototype to spread the positive attitude towards palliative care that can be applied to other groups in society, universities in different countries, etc.," says the ATLANTES researcher. 

After the game, she explains, students were invited to leave messages about what had made the biggest impact on them: "Many of them had difficulty expressing it in writing and felt the need to talk about it. In particular, she recalls the testimony of a journalism student, who commented that she had come to the activity with a totally different idea and that it had made a deep impression on her. "I leave here without fear," she said.

The design has been carried out from an interdisciplinary approach. Teachers and students from the School of Architecture and the Schools of speech, Education Nursing, Economics and Medicine. It also had the support of Tantaka, the University of Navarra's solidarity time bank, and the Social Innovation Unit of the Government of Navarra.