Acute Care (2013)

Ever wondered what it's like to work in the stressful environment of a hospital? Do you have what it takes to ensure the health and safety of your patients who have needs that can change from minute to minute?

Acute Care is a co-operative board game in which players take on the role of nurses staffing a busy medical/surgical unit in a hospital setting. Through one 12-hour shift, they must work together to provide care for their patients and deal with emergencies and complications as they arise — ideally achieving a high level of quality while doing so.

The most precious and limited resource for real-life nurses is their time, so in Acute Care time — in the form of "time cubes" — is exactly what you must spend in order to complete tasks and care for patients. Each hour, you have six times cubes (each representing ten minutes of real time) to allocate to various tasks; cards that require you to spend time cubes have little boxes on which to place the cubes to indicate that you're performing that action.

Since the players are all working together, the Challenge Deck provides the opposition to the players throughout the game. Each card drawn from it represents some challenge or opportunity that the nurses must face in order to care for their patients and manage the unit.

Gauging success in a healthcare setting can be difficult. Having patients get better and discharging them home are the main goals, but the quality of care provided is also important, regardless of the outcome. Quality care includes patient satisfaction, staff cooperation, timeliness, performance improvement, and effective patient and family education, so in Acute Care, success is measured on a scale of quality points earned or lost, eventually leading to either Commendations (for high quality) or Deficiencies (for low quality).