Doctors make game out of learning infection control →
Hell yes.
A table-top card battle game, “The Healing Blade” is built around a fantasy world, complete with sorcerers, villains and heroines that the two doctors created. Characters are divided into The Apothecary Healers, named after real-world antibiotics, and The Lords of Pestilence, named after actual bacterial agents.
Dr. Mathews, a hospitalist and intensivist in New Mexico, said the concept for the game came to him one night during ICU rounds.
“I was struck upon the complexity and yet innate nature of gaming within the choice I would make for putting some of my sick patients on particular antibiotics,” he said. “Essentially, in a similar way, when you are playing a complex multi-tiered video game, we are making similar choices by obtaining data from our cultures [and] making risk-management decisions.”
