An educational board game for learning and teaching burn care: A preliminary evaluation

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Emergency Medicine
• Burn Care

Background:

• Effective management of severe burn injuries is critical for patient outcomes.
• Existing training, like the Emergency Management of Severe Burns (EMSB) course, provides essential skills.
• A novel board game has been developed as a supplementary learning tool for burn injury management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a preliminary evaluation of a newly developed educational board game for burn care.
• To assess the game's utility in enhancing knowledge and stimulating discussion among healthcare professionals.
• To gather subjective feedback on the game's design, relevance, and educational value.

Main Methods:

• A multidisciplinary group of healthcare staff (doctors, nurses, therapists) participated in playing the board game.
• Some participants had prior completion of the EMSB course.
• Subjective feedback was collected via a questionnaire with Likert-type ratings and open-ended questions.

Main Results:

• The game received positive ratings for styling, ease of instructions, and relevance of questions (average to excellent).
• Participants found the game useful for increasing knowledge and stimulating discussion (good to excellent).
• All participants recommended the board game to other healthcare professionals.

Conclusions:

• This preliminary evaluation suggests the board game successfully meets its objectives of increasing burn care knowledge and fostering discussion.
• The game is noted as the sole burns and plastic surgery educational game in current literature.
• Further research is warranted to comprehensively assess the educational impact and utility of this board game in burn management.