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Board game helps hone new nurses’ skills

New nurses and students are learning about management skills thanks to a board game featuring a miniature ward.
Ward_Game_tile.jpg

New nurses and students are learning about management skills thanks to a board game featuring a miniature ward.


Practice development nurse Adrian Debney with
the board game he developed, aimed to help train nurses. 

Practice development nurse Adrian Debney developed the interactive game at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust to help staff consider real-life scenarios.

The board recreates a ward with bays, side rooms and kitchen, and has cards profiling the skills of the fictional ward staff. 

Mr Debney said the game was an engaging tool to help hone staff’s skills before they hit the wards.

Scenarios include managing a norovirus outbreak and what to do when a discharged patient leaves their keys behind.

Safe space 

‘While the game is a novel idea, there is a sound theory behind it,’ said Mr Debney, who hopes the game will be used beyond the trust.

‘We know that staff develop more effective practice if they get a chance to analyse scenarios first and to look at all the ways a particular situation would play out.

‘We talk through the decisions, but by allowing them to make mistakes in a safe space we can develop their critical faculties, which will ultimately benefit patient safety.’

Other educational puzzles aimed at nurses include a game to reduce medication errors and one on caring for emergency burns patients.


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