Activities and Games

Studies have shown that if people are asked to come up with their own ideas, the ideas ‘stick’ much better. Incorporate adult learning principles within your education sessions with staff to promote relevance to their practice and motivation to learn. You can ask your staff to brainstorm their own solutions to infection control issues, such as:

• How to ensure all staff members are cleaning their hands
• How to remind people which kinds of encounters require hand hygiene
• How to encourage patient/resident hand hygiene

You might be surprised at what they come up with (use prize incentives)!

Browse through the PICNet activities below for your own use or inspiration!

PICNet’s Infection Control Week Planning and Communications Toolkit has lots of great activity ideas that you can use throughout the year… not just for Infection Control Week! Download the document to read all 20 activity ideas.

Below are previews of a few of the most popular activities!

Download the 2018 Toolkit

Songs, Videos, and Flash Mobs

Get your staff involved in creative projects like:

• Infection Control Videos – There are some great ones here!
• Flash Mobs – Watch a great example!

Handwashing Demonstrations

With poster paint and gloves

Supplies:
• 1 or 2 bottles of poster paint – bright red works well against blue gloves
• Surgical gloves (assorted sizes)

1. Have everyone put on surgical gloves, then squirt about 5mL of poster paint into each person’s hand
2. Have them cover their eyes and “wash” their hands with the paint, as if it is hand sanitizer
3. When they open their eyes, they will see which areas of their hands they missed
4. Next, have them try to remove the gloves without contaminating their hands
5. And then… check to see whether anyone has paint on their hands (teaching point: gloves can leak!)

With Glo Germ or similar UV product

Supplies:
• UV-visible powder
• UV light
• handwashing facilities

1. Have everyone coat their hands in the UV powder
2. Then, everyone washes their hands (and make sure each person has to turn on and off the taps, if the taps are not automatic!)
3. (Also, put some UV product on the door handles if the hand washing facilities are in another room!)
4. After people have washed and dried their hands, shine the UV light on their hands so they can see what areas they missed.

Infection Control Sherlock Holmes

Set up an infection crime scene and invite staff detectives to come solve the clues!

“The Sherlock Holmes Case of the Missing Microbes”

Download the Sherlock Holmes Game Plan.

Crush that stereotype that infection control is boring and make infection control fun! Use the resources below to supplement your activities and gamify important infection control concepts for your educational needs. We have ready-to-print crossword puzzles, word searches, scrabble, and more comprehensive games such as Jeopardy and our signature Let’s Go Viral Game Kit.

Crosswords

• Level 1
• Level 2
• Answer Keys (both levels)

Word Searches

• Infection Control Word Search #1
• Infection Control Word Search #2
• Interior Health Hand Hygiene and Glove Use Word Search

Hand Hygiene Jeopardy Game

• Download the game

Infection Control Scrabble

• Download the game

Infection Control J-parody

The game is created in Powerpoint, so you will need a computer with a monitor that your contestants can all see.

• J-parody for Infection Control Basics
• J-parody for Lab
• J-parody for Public Health Nurses
• J-parody for Dental

Let’s Go Viral! Game Kit

PICNet has developed an educational game to help train your staff in infection control… and have some fun while doing it! Let’s Go Viral is a Family Feud-style game that can be played with 8-20 staff members, one game show host, and a show host assistant. The game is a series of questions about infection control, with the two teams competing for points by getting correct answers. Each question is built around a teachable moment; the instruction book and demo video include the educational information for question. The game takes about 45-60 minutes to play (depending on the amount of teaching your staff requires); the game can be shortened by omitting questions.

The questions are based around the topics of:

• How infections are transmitted
• Staff hand hygiene
• Patient/resident hand hygiene
• Personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Risk assessment
• Flu/norovirus season
• …and more.

The feedback we have received from users has been extremely positive:

“I just wanted to let you know that we finished doing the LGV program about 30 minutes ago and it was WONDERFUL!  I’ve started to use it in my bi-monthly orientation classes for new hires and anniversary staff. Both teams had such a good time and I truly feel the lessons they learned are going to be remembered.  Some of it was a review of existing knowledge and for some, it was totally new.  They actually got quite competitive and I loved the energy going on in the room! Thank you so much for developing a fun way for folks to learn. Yay!”

Download the Kit

You can download the kit to run this educational workshop yourself, and you can re-use the kit as many times as you like.

The educational game was developed for our visits to residential care facilities, but it is equally applicable to acute care settings. The game is suitable for all staff, including housekeeping and auxiliary.

The game cards and instructions are freely downloadable from this website to print them yourself. You’ll also have to cut and laminate them.