Fighting infection is one of the more important parts of medicine, but the doctors of tomorrow get to treat it like a game when they play The Healing Blade. In this card game, developed by a gaming company led by two San Francisco physicians, students take on roles of characters like the Lord of Pestilence or Apothecary Healer in a fantasy world called Soma. According to The Scientist:
"A Lord of Pestilence, for example, might play Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a highly opportunistic, gram-negative bacterium that commonly causes infections in hospitals. An appropriate counter-play by the Apothecary Healer would be to play ciprofloxacin or ticarcillan, two antibiotics that have action against P. aeruginosa.
The Lord of Pestilence can also play a multi-drug resistant card against the Healer, who might have to choose whether to use a narrow- or broad-spectrum antibiotic against the infection. Just like in other role-playing games, such as Wizards ...
