Friday Night At The ER

Very impressive Serious Learning Board Game. Useful for both medical and non-medical learners and organizations.

I teach using serious games; and Friday Night at the ER is a very serious game that I have facilitated for young managers in Healthcare. So serious that it takes 20-30 minutes to explain the game (running through the first round of lay). It's OK. I feel that it takes it self too seriously and is a very long and complicated way to uncover some simple ideas and its not that exciting.

The game is very much set up for a hyper-competitive Anglo audience which fails to reproduce in an Asian situation. Where acceptance and passive cooperation is the norm. The drive amongst our players is the play within the rules... and without prompting not much happens. They go through their moves in silo fashion accepting the results. In 11 plays only one team asked for more data (the single insight to drive innovation). And even when prompted few ask for data. I have innovated the game by asking not only for a hospital name BUT also a vision... aimed at driving something beyond passive play. Prompting people doing the game to ask "what are you doing to implement your vision".

FNER takes 15 minutes to establish the session, then around 20-30 minutes to explain. Typically as its so tedious more than a few people zone out, and I need high energy to keep things focussed. Then 75-120 minutes of game play (slow early on as you remind people about the set moves - I have A3 reminders of each of the components of each round on the walls - but there is still a lot of what should I do now, what order is this in the first 4-5 rounds. Then another 60 - 120 minutes to debrief. So the balance between playing and learning is not right. It does not fit into a normal half day, and the lack of content means its not a full day.

Conversely when I use other, simpler games such as "the Crew Deep sea" and "For Sale" and my rework of Secret Hitler (minus the war theme) even Catan (again a problem as its takes a while to explain vs the time to play vs debriefing) there is enjoyment, excitement, and activity and fun. But here because the games play is relatively complex there is less time for innovation less fun.

Ok it's an acceptable teaching aid if you have 3/4 of a day to spare. A full half day debriefing the game is tedious.