Pulmonopoly: A Game-Based Approach to Teach and Reinforce Basic Concepts of Pulmonary Medicine to Medical Students

Pulmonopoly is an innovative active-learning medical board game addressses core pulmonary concepts in an engaging, competitive style. The strength of Pulmonopoly lies in its ability to combine ease of setup and play with comprehensive content coverage that comprises a significant proportion of national board examinations, offering a gamification experience that can be readily applied in different settings and modified for learner levels.

We created an instructional game, Pulmonopoly, based on pulmonary content delivered to preclinical medical students and required for national board examinations. We invited first-year medical students to participate in 60-minute small-group sessions. Content addressed pulmonary subject areas of anatomy and pharmacology, physiology, pathophysiology, and more advanced modifier questions. Correct answers were rewarded properties, and victory was achieved when all properties of a neighborhood were collected. Students completed pre- and postintervention surveys with 5-point Likert-scale responses about their experience, understanding of core pulmonary concepts, and whether playing Pulmonopoly reinforced these concepts.

Fifty-six first-year medical students participated in the game sessions. The postintervention survey (N = 51), when compared to the preintervention survey (N = 56), demonstrated that students' understanding of 11 core pulmonary concepts was reinforced after playing the board game (average Likert survey scores improved from 3.1 to 4.4). The surveys also provided positive narrative feedback on student engagement and satisfaction.

Pulmonopoly is an engaging game-based approach to help improve and reinforce core pulmonary concepts for medical students. The game requires minimal setup and preparation and is easily replicable at other institutions.