Playing the Doctor Game

James Fulmer, MD, awoke one morning with a vision that required immediate attention: working on a new board game.

While he had dabbled in creating games, this one would be an entirely different experience. Fulmer drew up a board, created pieces, and played the game with his family.

Knowing he had something special, he got started on producing Doctor Wars while maintaining his role as a hospitalist at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida.

Doctor Wars is a combination of Risk and chess, as players can move around the board trying to cure patients to earn points. Mixing authentic hospital settings along with a bevy of in-jokes helped Fulmer sell out the entire first run of the game.

A second run, a card version, and possibly an electronic game are on the horizon.

On how the game is played:
It’s set in a hospital. The purpose of the game is to get the most points, and the sicker the patients are, the more points they are worth.

Each patient is in one of 12 rooms in the hospital. You are in charge of four pieces. You have an attending, a resident, an intern, and a nurse. Each piece moves differently, like chess. Whoever has the highest ranked piece in the patient’s room can cure the patient.

On the reaction of healthcare professionals:

I have a code brown card, which is when a patient has diarrhea, and nobody can go into the room. There are in-jokes like that with all the cards. I know a lot of people like the game because of the in-jokes.

On the influences of the game:

I’m a hospitalist, so this is totally a personal experience. The problems are all problems that occur with patients in a hospital.

Most of the action cards are things that have happened. I have a card that says a patient bakes you a cake, for extra points. That’s something that actually happens.

I have the attending going to a conference, where you can remove an attending from a room. Those are the kind of things that can happen when you are in the medical field.