Nurses from the cardiology intensive care unit at the University Hospital of Toulouse started creating a game for students to review the basics of cardiology. They just presented “Cardiogame” at the Nursing Salon in Paris.
Whether it’s cards, skills or boards, board games are all the rage in Toulouse. Designated as the board game capital, Pink City continues to inspire game creation. Patricia Verdejo and her fellow night nurses atUSIC (cardiology intensive care unit) at Rangueil Hospital (University Hospital of Toulouse) had an innovative idea of creating “Cardiogamy“, a game intended for students to learn the basics of cardiology.
A project that should be fun and informative. “The idea came to us two years ago. We accept a lot of student interns. One day I had the idea to talk about a game with two of them. I take out the medicine boxes, put them in the middle and randomly choose one, ask them what it is, from how many grams are in an ampoule, etc. But I realized that they absolutely do not know,” explains Patricia Verdejo.
Faced with these shortcomings, nurses began to create a game inspired by the classic “7 families”. “We took the most important and most used drugs in our department, i.e. 10 families of drugs, and wrote them down on the cards,” reports the nurse.
7 families or trivia quest?
Then the USIC night team tested the effectiveness of the game with its interns. “We noticed that young people liked her. And the advantage is that they learn without the pressure of an interview.
The nurses then began creating a second game, more inspired by “Trivial Pursuit.” “Cardioquest” is based on the history of cardiology, where the former is more related to pharmacology.
“Transferring our passion and experience”
Patricia Vernejo is traveling to IFSI (Nursing Training Institutes) to introduce these 2 games to as many people as possible, hoping to one day see them available for sale. With 6 of the 8 creators of “Cardiogame” and “Cardioquest” she just participated in the big one Salon for care, in Paris, where the game attracted several schools. “Here is a showcase, we could present our games to many nursing students and do what we love in our profession, convey our passion and experience. It is much more effective than a video course!”, testifies Patricia Vernejo.