SCALENEo (Smart ClinicAL rEasoning iN physiothErapy) had two main objectives. 1) To disseminate an innovative learning tool in teaching physiotherapy, through a serious game dedicated to clinical reasoning. We consider the serious game as an innovative initiative with significant potential impact in initial or continuing physical therapy education, of which clinical reasoning is a fundamental ingredient. 2) To take advantage of the possibilities offered by information and communication technologies to develop not only a paper version of the serious game, but rather a complete online ecosystem for teaching and learning clinical reasoning in physiotherapy in the musculoskeletal field. In particular we aimed at implementing an online version of the serious game that could be played either in small groups or by a player alone, with an individualized feedback.
By ending the Interreg FWVl NOMADe project, the different partners involved (CeREF, Rehazenter, UPH, Henallux) wanted to develop further the pedagogical card game presented in the following paper: Hage R, Fourré A, Ramonfosse L, Leteneur S, Jones M, Dierick F. Description and rules of a new card game to learn clinical reasoning in musculoskeletal physiotherapy. J Man Manip Ther. 2023 Aug;31(4):287-296. doi: 10.1080/10669817.2022.2132346. The need addressed is the necessity for physiotherapy students, and even for experienced therapists, to improve their clinical reasoning, i.e. their ability to make sense of the various information available regarding a patient in view of understanding the pathology and designing a treatment. It has moreover to be said that clinical reasoning is becoming more and more relevant in Europe because physiotherapists are getting closer to direct access. Future physiotherapists have therefore to become more and more autonomous in their reasoning, i.e to become better in clinical reasoning. These reasons led us to apply for an Erasmus+ project aiming at developing further and disseminating the serious game developed.