More than mere games: a review of card and board games for medical education.

During recent years, attempts have been made to complement more classical concepts of medical teaching by introducing card and board games on medical topics. These teaching tools cover every age and education group, and many different medical topics. In this article we have reviewed all card and board games for medical education purpose listed in NCBI PubMed database and Internet game databases (n = 29). It summarizes games that might be useful to medical teaching staff. To categorize these games, a new schema for medical games categorization, based on the game mechanism and theories on experiential learning circles, is proposed and discussed. Additionally we have a view on card and board games with medical topics for entertainment (n = 22).