Nursing is serious business, and nursing school demands that you take your education seriously. However, studying to be a nurse doesn't have to be boring and monotonous. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, games help nursing students retain information and motivate them by making the learning process more exciting. A host of nursing games can be found on the Internet, or you can create them offline.
Super Nurse Questions
The Learning Nurse Resources Network website offers 35 individual games in the Super Nurse series, all free to play. Each game consists of 15 multiple-choice and true-false questions that the computer draws randomly from a bank of 30 questions. You gain 10 points for each correct answer and lose five points for each incorrect answer. Furthermore, these games are timed: You get 30 seconds to answer each question. The subjects of these games range from symptom-related conditions such as dizziness to patient assessment and professional boundaries.
Drag and Drop Anatomy
This free game on StudentNursesLounge.com allows you to test your knowledge of bodily organs. After selecting either a male or female body displayed without a skeleton, muscles or organs, you are shown individual organs and asked to place each one correctly inside of the body. Furthermore, you have to rotate them to their correct orientations. For extra help, you can display the skeleton as a point of reference, or request a hint. If you try to place an organ incorrectly, the organ will not click into place, and you will be told whether the placement or orientation-- or both -- was incorrect. After you complete the game, the computer gives you a percentage score based on your rate of correct organ insertions.
Millionaire Student Game
This free game on FreeNurseTutor.com is a simplified version of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" television game show. You're given multiple choice questions, and for each question you answer correctly you earn a certain amount of money. The dollar value of the questions starts at $200 and increases until you answer the final question for $1 million. If you answer any question incorrectly, however, you lose all the money you've accumulated and have to start over. This game is available in four different versions: General Psychiatric Review, Endocrine System, Cardiac and Gastrointestinal. For an offline version of this game, you could have a friend read questions to you from a study guide and ascribe the appropriate dollar values to the questions.
Medical Matching
Matching games allow you to practice linking nursing vocabulary terms to their respective definitions. For example, the Nursing Process matching game on FreeNurseTutor.com juxtaposes terms such as assessment, diagnosis, objective data and subjective data against their definitions in a 16-card matching game. You can also create your own matching games by writing vocabulary terms on one set of white index cards while writing their definitions on a separate set of colored index cards. If you study with other students, you can each make your own matching games and then trade or combine card sets during study sessions.
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Writer Bio
Christopher Cascio is a memoirist and holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and literature from Southampton Arts at Stony Brook Southampton, and a Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in the rhetoric of fiction from Pennsylvania State University. His literary work has appeared in "The Southampton Review," "Feathertale," "Kalliope" and "The Rose and Thorn Journal."