The Nurse’s Knowledge Bank: A Serious Knowledge Elicitation and Evaluation Game

The problem addressed in this research is that not all nursing knowledge is captured in a way that is easy to access outside the border of a community of practice (CoP) or beyond geography or time. As nursing accounts for over half the healthcare professionals globally, the role is broad in scope, performed in various healthcare settings and across the human lifespan; managing this knowledge is important. To address this problem, this research explores to what extent a serious game could elicit and evaluate specialist nursing knowledge so that it can be preserved beyond its initial use. However, no suitable game was found. Using an elaborated action design research (eADR) approach, this research designed, implemented, and evaluated a serious knowledge elicitation and evaluation game – The Nurse’s Knowledge Bank. In total, three cycles of the game were played by nurses (n = 18) based in an oncology setting. From the three cycles n = 112 evaluated knowledge submissions were captured. These submissions included concepts such as ‘Check patients’ temperature on discharge’ or ‘Ensure patient has their prescription before discharge’. These submissions were mapped into two clinical terminologies, providing a means of sharing this knowledge beyond the clinic border and demonstrating that serious games could potentially have a role in knowledge management. This paper presents an overview of the development and design of the game.