The Effect of a Card Game upon Achievements within Medical Terms Topic: MedTerm Game

Abstract

The study was attempted to determine the efficiency of the card game named ‘MedTerm’ upon the students’ achievements of the medical terms. The research was one group pre-test and post-test without control group research design and the study group elected by using the convenience sampling method consisted of the first-year students (n=46) elderly care program of the vocational school of health services of a university in northern Turkey. All students who voluntarily participated in the study played the card game named ‘MedTerm’ in order to learn medical terms. In the research, ‘The Medical Terms Achievement Test (MTAT)’ consisted of 57 open-ended questions was used as data collection tool. Achievement scores related to medical terms before and after the game were evaluated. At the end of the implementation, the semi-structured interviews were also conducted with randomly selected students.. As a result of the research, a statistically significant difference was found between the pre-test mean scores and the post-test mean scores in favour of the post-test (t=-17.141, p<0.05). In accordance with the data obtained, it can be said that the ‘MedTerm’ card game increases elderly care program students’ sound and partial understandings of medical terms and their achievements. In addition, it was concluded that all students expressed positive views concerning the functioning of the course.