Ward Hero
A game about the moment hand hygiene slips
Twenty minutes on a phone. Eight stages of a hospital ward that gets faster than you do. The point is not that you win. The point is that you notice when you forget — and what you were doing when you did.
01 — THE STORY
Why we made this
Every year, around 4.3 million patients in EU and EEA hospitals acquire a healthcare-associated infection. That is the most recent ECDC figure, up from 3.5 million in the previous survey. ECDC’s own assessment is that at least one in five of those infections is preventable through sustained, multifaceted infection control programmes. Some published estimates put the preventable share much higher.
Hand hygiene is the cheapest, best-evidenced lever we have. Every hospital in Europe runs a hand hygiene programme. Every healthcare worker can recite the WHO 5 Moments. Compliance with auditors on the ward sits above 90%. Compliance when no one is watching sits closer to 50%. The gap is not knowledge. The gap is what happens to a known habit when the next patient arrives, the prescription timer pops, the phone rings, and someone else needs you.
Ward Hero does not fix that. No game does. What Ward Hero does is give a team a shared, slightly playful experience of their own routine slipping under load — and then a structured conversation about what that means on their actual ward. It is a trigger for reflection, not a training course. We think that is more useful than another lecture.
02 — THE GAME
What Ward Hero is
A browser-based hospital ward management game. You play a healthcare worker handling admissions, prescriptions, X-rays, discharges, and the occasional superbug, all in real time. There is one mechanic that matters: every time you touch a patient, you should also tap the hand-rub dispenser. You will not, reliably. Eight stages, escalating workload. About three minutes to learn. About twelve minutes to clear all eight stages, if you focus.
Ward Hero is a game, not an IPC simulation. Players will not gain infection control skills or knowledge from playing it. What it surfaces — in a lighthearted way — is how easily a known routine gets interrupted under cognitive load. The real teaching happens in the conversation that follows.
Free, browser-based, no login, no tracking. Works on any phone, tablet, or laptop. Built by Pandemos in the Netherlands.
The workshop around the game
A 60-minute facilitated session designed to turn twenty minutes of game-play into a frank team conversation and one concrete intention each participant takes back to their ward. Five beats: one ECDC-grounded data block, twenty minutes of play, fifteen minutes of structured debrief, ten minutes of closing commitment work. Suitable for nurses, junior doctors, students, and mixed audiences.
The session was designed by Arnold Bosman (Pandemos). The full facilitator package includes everything an educator needs to run the workshop competently the first time.
Three ways to use Ward Hero
The game is free for everyone, forever. The two paid tiers exist for educators and institutions that want to deploy it as part of structured training.