

Magic the Gathering for Med Students - CoryOndrejka
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/04/26/bisa0426.htm

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carbocation
This is awesome. Why limit it to infectious disease? Acute non-infectious
disease (trauma, vascular events, cancer) would be a great next step, followed
perhaps by common disease. This would be a tremendous way to learn pharm. At
the end of the day, rote knowledge can lay down a nice structure for actual
understanding. (I know this sounds backwards, but if you know the right answer
then it makes it easier to remember the mechanism by which it is correct.)

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rsheridan6
I think games would be a great way to learn a lot of things. If I ever get
time I want to make a "pathogen" video game - you would have to identify the
pathogen and attack it with the right antibiotic or immune system component.

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greenbox
Games can be a good way to learn a lot of things, and so can simulation for
the more complex situations. There is a push for using sim and serious games
in medical education these days (went to a great conference a few months ago
about it - IMSH 2010). It's funny you mentioned the "pathogen" video game - I
made one a couple of years ago in residency called Bacteria Tower Defense
(flash game). And it's designed so it can be easily updated by changing the
data "file" to reflect changes in antimicrobial therapy. I'm actually working
with several academic centers now on integrating that and my current project,
SimCode ACLS, a web-delivered real-time simulator to improve the quality of
teaching healthcare providers how to resuscitate people, while decreasing the
cost of training and competency tracking. Will be presenting it at a national
medical conference (SGIM) this week.

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rsheridan6
Yeah, Bacteria Tower Defense is along the lines of what I was thinking of.
Simulations are good too, but video games can combine screwing around with
actually learning something.

If you did it during a residency I guess I have no excuse.

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kyro
This is right up my alley. I'll be going to med school in a few months, and so
I'm looking for study materials and methods (I plan on trying Anki). I think
it's great that they're trying to make the study of medicine a bit more
enjoyable than just rote memorization. Also, as someone who hopes to venture
into entrepreneurship as a physician, it's really encouraging to read about
such ventures.

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mclin
Do it! Anki is amazing. Unfortunately, I have yet to manage to convince anyone
else to use it... I can see how it can look intimidating. It's a big
commitment to have to do expired flash cards every day! OTOH, things you put
into Anki you can remember for the rest of your life! I wish I had it when I
was in school. There's so much I've already forgotten...

Can you imagine if doctors remembered everything they ever had to memorize in
med school?

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_delirium
> Can you imagine if doctors remembered everything they ever had to memorize
> in med school?

It'd be pretty amazing! Which is why it's unfortunate that we don't have a
close approximation to that with a man/machine interaction, where people do
the hard-to-automate bits, and machines do the rote memorization bits. The
first diagnosis expert system to beat human doctors (in an admittedly narrow
domain), MYCIN, is now something like 35 years old, and yet doctors still
rarely use computational assistance. Or at least, they don't officially: I
know plenty of doctors who use Wikipedia in their daily work.

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trickjarrett
There was a bit of a huff over it today, one of the main pieces of art they
are using is heavily based on a piece from Magic the Gathering.
<http://www.mananation.com/art-plagiarism-healing-blade-game/>

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jsharpe
The only trouble I see with this is that it needs to stay up to date with
current medical knowledge (which changes all the time). The game will quickly
go out of date if it is not kept strictly aligned with current medical texts.

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JCThoughtscream
If I recall correctly, there was some anecdotal evidence that time committed
to video game actually improves a surgeon's capabilities during an operation.
If a card game can do the same for pharmacology, cheers to Nerdcore!

