If you’d told me when I first trained to be a nurse that I’d be part of a team that designed a board game about diarrhoea, I would never have believed you. But a few months ago the finished product, which I’ve worked on in my NHS role, became available to buy.

I am a senior nurse for infection prevention and control at Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals NHS foundation trust. I’m responsible, among other things, for educating staff on best practice around infection control. The role is hugely varied, but generally it’s about patient safety and preventing harm due to infection.

Diarrhoea can be a warning sign that someone has a gastrointestinal infection. Clostridium difficile (C diff), for example, is an infection that can cause bowel problems and even death. Norovirus spreads easily and can cause significant unpleasant symptoms in patients.

The Poopology Game raises awareness of training around diarrhoea in care settings Photograph: Focus Games

Identifying C diff can be delayed in hospital or the community and it’s important to get treatment quickly. C diff can be hard to manage. You have to isolate anyone with it because if you don’t, other patients can catch it. If someone touches the bacteria and then puts their hand to their mouth, C diff can get into the gut. Hospital environments can become contaminated, which is why it’s important to clean appropriately and wear the right clothing such as gloves and aprons. Nationally there are C diff targets and each trust is penalised if there are more than a certain number of cases.

When there are norovirus outbreaks, it can be challenging to find enough single rooms or cubicles. Sometimes if a few people on a ward have the same infection, all the people in that bay will be isolated together. There can be negatives to having more private rooms and cubicles as it places a huge demand on staff who have to observe all the patients, some of whom might be at high risk of falling.

At my trust, we have a campaign every year to raise awareness among staff about how to manage patients with diarrhoea. Within healthcare, there are so many things staff have to remember and a refresher is always useful; you also get new staff coming through all the time.

I always try to use different ways of teaching rather than just powerpoint presentations, which is a very dry and passive way of learning. The team tries to think of innovative ways to make it memorable and cater for all learning styles. One year, a colleague came up with the idea of a board game. We thought it was a great idea and got to work on developing it straight away.

We created it at the end of 2015, tried it out and the staff loved it. We did some work on the board to make it more useful to healthcare professionals and then took it to the trust’s innovations team, who find ways to progress ideas that staff have come up with. They contacted Focus Games, who helped us develop the game further.

It’s called Poopology Game and the board design is a toilet roll. You roll the dice and move along the squares. Depending on the square you land on you take a chance card or are asked a question by another player. We’ve designed it to raise awareness of correct practice in hospitals as well as home care, and nursing and residential care.

The board game is a more active learning experience and people are much more likely to remember what they’ve learned. One of the difficulties with educating staff under pressure and with high work demands is trying to get them off the ward to education sessions. With this, either my team can deliver short training sessions on the wards or staff can borrow the game and play it themselves. It’s for up to eight people, but you can play in teams.

My hope is that every health and care organisation in the country uses it. Copies have already been sold in the US and Australia. I would say this, but I think it’s a fantastic way to educate staff in acute trusts and community settings about managing diarrhoea.

Allison Sykes, who was interviewed for this piece, is senior nurse (practice development IPC) at Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals NHS foundation trust

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