Games for nurses: Vital Signs Nursing trains clinical reasoning

BreakAway Games built Vital Signs Nursing as part of Vital Signs, a med-surg series of 2D, single-player, browser-based games that also includes Vital Signs Pediatric and Vital Signs: ED. It was a finalist in the Business category of the 2018 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge.

The aim is to recreate the clinical reasoning and priority setting of a nurse on a typical medical/surgical unit, and to exercise decision making and prioritization under stress. It is meant for new nurses and for nursing students, and it drills nurse-specific procedures. Among games for nurses it is one of the few that put several patients on the screen at once.

The player works through the five steps of the nursing process, which are assess, diagnose, plan, implement and evaluate, for several simultaneous patients under time pressure. Minor events turn up in the middle of essential care decisions, designed to build critical thinking and priority setting.

Performance is measured against an ideal case management process. Scores are given across several critical dimensions, and the application records the player's choices during the simulation so that they can be reviewed after play.

Handling several patients at the same time is the central demand of the game, and the scoring rewards the order in which care is given.

BreakAway's vHealthCare portal at store.breakawaygames.com is online in November 2026. It lists Vital Signs Nursing - Caseload 1, Vital Signs Pediatrics and an emergency-room title with caseloads such as adult, infections, injuries and newborn and infant. The portal describes the Vital Signs products as testing the user on handling several cases at once.

The portal groups the Vital Signs titles with other product families, among them Standard Patient Studio cases such as chest pain and nausea. It states no prices and no audience for the Vital Signs titles, and asks interested readers to contact BreakAway through its support address or contact page. The browser-based format described in 2018 is not restated on the portal. Other games for nurses on the same portal include Community Health Nursing, Knowledge Club with NCLEX variants, NCLEX, Management Challenge, Handover Sim and Patient Discharge. The nursing games listing follows each title's status.