Revolutionizing Healthcare Emergency Preparedness with an Affordable Custom Tabletop Board Game Exercise.

Ascenttra’s Destination Disaster: Healthcare game is a specialized tool designed to enhance the emergency preparedness of healthcare facilities. This engaging, discussion-based exercise focuses on critical areas such as patient movement, resource allocation, medical surge considerations, and decision-making during various incidents. With its customizable scenarios and interactive gameplay, the Healthcare game ensures relevant and impactful training tailored to your organization’s policies and procedures.

The Power of Short, Focused Exercises

Hospitals operate in fast-paced environments where time is a precious commodity. Traditional, full-day exercises often require significant planning and resources. A shorter, well-structured tabletop exercise offers an alternative that delivers value without overwhelming your schedule. In just 90 minutes, your team can:

• Explore Specific Scenarios: Focus on high-priority risks, such as supply chain disruptions or surge capacity during crises.

• Identify Gaps in Policies, Plans, and Procedures: Highlight areas that need adjustment to align with real-world demands.

• Enhance Team Collaboration: Strengthen communication and decision-making across departments under simulated stress.

• Encourage Continuous Improvement: Generate actionable feedback that can guide further training and planning efforts.

Key Features of the Healthcare Game

1. Patient Movement and Surge Management

Participants navigate complex challenges involving patient movement, surge capacity, and resource allocation. These realistic scenarios simulate real-world pressures, helping teams refine their response strategies for managing large-scale medical incidents.

2. Decision-Making Under Pressure

The game encourages critical thinking and adaptive decision-making, allowing participants to explore the consequences of their choices in a safe, controlled environment. Facilitators can introduce unexpected injects to challenge participants further and foster deeper discussions about procedures and readiness.

3. Customizable Scenarios for Relevance

The Healthcare game is tailored to reflect your facility’s unique policies, plans, and resources. Customization options include:

• Patient cards with symptoms and conditions specific to chosen hazards.

• Inject cards with scenario specific challenges. 

• Customized Exercise Evaluation Guides tied directly to your plans..

These elements ensure that exercises are meaningful and directly applicable to your organization’s needs.

4. Opportunities for Collaborative Learning

Participants engage in collaborative problem-solving, fostering teamwork and improving interdepartmental communication. The game’s design encourages discussions about best practices and innovative solutions, building stronger teams in the process.

5. Integration with Responder and EOC Games

The Healthcare game seamlessly integrates with Ascenttra’s Destination Disaster: Responder and Destination Disaster: EOC games, creating a comprehensive simulation of real-world interactions. This interconnected gameplay replicates the flow of patients and information flow between healthcare facilities, on-scene responders, and emergency operations centers.

How the Healthcare Game Works

Participants in the Healthcare game are presented with challenging scenario injects designed to replicate real-world incidents. These injects prompt participants to:

• Triage and prioritize patient care based on symptoms and resource availability.

• Allocate personnel, equipment, rooms, and other resources efficiently.

• Coordinate with other teams and the Hospital Command Center to manage patient transport and surge capacity.

• Respond to evolving situations, adapting plans as new information becomes available.

Facilitators guide the session, introducing new injects and scenario challenges in real-time to simulate dynamic emergency conditions.

Tools and Deliverables

The Healthcare game includes a suite of tools to support effective exercises and actionable outcomes:

• Map and Boards: Simulating your facility’s layout and patient flow. You update the real-world census prior to game start.

• Patient Cards: Featuring symptoms and conditions aligned with your chosen hazards.

• Resource Cards: Representing equipment, personnel, and other assets.

• Scenario Inject Cards: Tailored to your organization’s specific risks and challenges.

• Exercise Evaluation Guides (EEGs): Aligned with your standard operating procedures to ensure detailed After-Action Reports.

• Facilitator Instructions and Templates: Including PowerPoint scenario presentations and immersive Ascenttra News Network videos.

Benefits of the Healthcare Game

1. Validates Emergency Plans and Policies

The Healthcare game allows participants to test their emergency plans against realistic scenarios, identifying strengths and areas for improvement. The game’s customization ensures exercises are relevant and effective.

2. Enhances Critical Thinking and Adaptability

By simulating high-pressure situations, the game challenges participants to think critically and adapt to evolving conditions, preparing them for real-world crises.

3. Strengthens Team Collaboration

The game fosters teamwork and communication among healthcare staff, improving coordination and readiness for managing large-scale incidents.

4. Provides Actionable Insights

With tools for After-Action Reports and Improvement Plans, the Healthcare game delivers valuable insights to guide continuous improvement in emergency preparedness.

Play Requirements

Space: The main play board is 56” wide by 25” high.

Players: The Healthcare game is not limited in the number of players, however, we recommend no more than 12 players representing the hospital resources in use and 6 at the Hospital Command Center table. More can easily be added by adding additional tables for different functions (e.g. PIO/JIC, Planning Section, etc.)

Knowledge: Players should have knowledge of their organization’s resources and policies, plans, and procedures.

Equipment: Table for the boards and computer that can show the presentation and play the news videos.

Why Choose Destination Disaster: Healthcare?

Ascenttra’s Healthcare game combines the rigor of traditional tabletop exercises with the engagement and interactivity of a board game. It transforms emergency preparedness training into an impactful experience that:

• Meets accreditation requirements for discussion-based exercises.

• Complies with Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) requirements.

• Encourages meaningful discussions about policies and procedures.

• Creates a safe environment for exploring innovative approaches and solutions.

Fun with Purpose

Emergency management is serious business, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull. Our product combines the rigor of a formal HSEEP exercise with the engaging elements of a board game but without the unrealistic randomness common in simple games that prevents them from deeply exploring your procedures and the consequences of player decisions. This balance ensures participants stay engaged, but are actually discussing your facility’s procedures and preparedness. While other emergency management games only seek to “familiarize” players with preparedness concepts, a Destination Disaster:Healthcare session produces relevant and actionable areas for improvement and corrective actions specific for your organization. 

Invest in Excellence

Regularly incorporating customized, 90-minute exercises into your preparedness program as part of a progressive exercise program can yield long-term benefits. Teams become more adept at navigating crises, policies evolve to meet current demands, and your hospital builds a culture of continuous improvement. Our solution offers a strategic investment in your hospital’s resilience for much less than a single vendor-facilitated exercise.

Let’s redefine what tabletop exercises can achieve. Contact us today to learn how our customizable, engaging solution can meet your emergency management needs and exceed expectations for less than you think.

Destination Disaster Healthcare comes with a customized scenario for your facility.

We include:

1. Resources simulating clinical, non clinical, and medical equipment. 

2. Hospital board simulating your department and functions with your accurate census numbers.

3. Hospital Command Center board.

4. Instructions for facilitators and evaluators including a training video for facilitators.

5. After-Action Report Template.

Scenario specific items included:

1. Patient symptomatology cards custom to your scenario.

2. Injects customized to your scenario.

3. Customized Exercise Evaluation Guides set to your scenario and plans, policies, and procedures.

4. Included synthetic news videos.

5. PowerPoint presentation for displaying selected scenario.

Additional scenario packs can be purchased.