6 Electronic Whiteboard Activities for Healthcare Educators

Electronic whiteboards are becoming more prevalent in healthcare education, and rightly so. They’re wonderful tools for engaging students and helping them learn the many intricacies of anatomy, physiology, and many other topics in the health curriculum.

Here’s a half-dozen activities you might want to consider when you use a whiteboard with healthcare students.

Activity #1: Demonstrate blood flow through heart

Project on your whiteboard a blank cutaway view of the heart. Then have students use whiteboard markers to trace blood flow along these or other routes:

• Upper body to lungs


• Lower body to lungs


• Right lung to aorta


• Left lung to aorta


• Right ventricle to left ventricle

Activity #2: Calculate dosages

Have students use the whiteboard markers to show their calculations for whatever dosage scenario you give them. Here are a few scenarios to get you started.

• The physician orders 30mg Celexa by mouth. The tablets you have are 20mg each. How many tablets will you administer?


• The patient has been told to take 50mg of Amitriptyline, but the pharmacy gave her tablets of 25mg each. How many tablets should she take?


• A pediatric patient needs 50mg of Amoxicillin syrup. The bottle indicates that there are 125mg per 5mL. How much syrup will you administer?


• Your patient needs 50mg of Solu-Cortef intramuscularly. The drug is available in 100mg/2ml solution. How much will you administer?

Activity #3: Identify parts of a business letter

Project a box the approximate size and shape of an 8½ × 11 paper. Have students draw boxes where each of the following parts of a business letter should be placed.

• Heading


• Inside address


• Salutation


• Date


• Body


• Complimentary close


• Signature


• Superscription

Activity #4: Build medical terms

Give students the meaning of a medical term, and then have them build the term on the whiteboard. Here are a few examples.

• Removal of the larynx (laryng/ectomy)


• Tumor of the nervous system (neur/oma)


• Rapid breathing (hyper/pnea)


• Surgical opening into the tympanum (tympan/otomy)


• Surgical creation of an opening of the jejunum through the stomach wall (jejun/ostomy)

For more examples, check your medical terminology text, which I hope is Barb Gylys's Medical Terminology Systems, or Simplified, or her newest, Express. Or perhaps Sharon Eagle's Medical Terminology in a Flash! But I digress.

Activity #5: Break down medical terms

Give students a medical term to write on the whiteboard. Then have them break the word down into its component parts. Here are a few terms to get you started. (Answers in parentheses.)

• Gangliectomy (gangliectomy/ectomy)


• Intrathecal (intra/thec/al)


• Laryngoscope (laryng/o/scope)


• Dermatologist (dermat/o/logist)


• Osteochondroma (osteo/chondr/oma)

Activity #6: Sequence steps in a procedure

Set up a drag-and-drop activity, if your whiteboard software offers one, and write the steps to a procedure out of order. Then have students put the steps into the correct order. Don’t be afraid to leave out steps. You’ll want the students to be able to place whatever steps are offered into the proper sequence to make sure that they fully understand the concepts involved.

>>> Do you have other activities you’d like to share? Use the Comment box to help other faculty using electronic whiteboards.