About FirstPoint
The conversation no one trains for.
When something difficult happens at work, the first person a colleague turns to shapes everything that follows. FirstPoint is a game that lets you practise being that person — safely, before it counts.
Why it exists
Clinicians are not untouched by the hardest moments of their work. After an adverse event, a death, a complaint, or a near miss, the person who was caring for the patient can carry it heavily — alongside the patient and family, the clinician involved is personally and professionally affected too. Guilt, replaying the moment, self-doubt and isolation are common, well-described responses — not signs of weakness or unfitness.
The trouble is that many affected clinicians are left to deal with it alone. The most helpful thing is often simple and human: someone reaching out early. And that is exactly the skill no one is really taught — what to say, and what to do, when you are the first point of contact for a colleague on their worst day.
What FirstPoint is
FirstPoint is a short, browser-based training game. You walk around a clinical setting and step into a moment from two sides. First you feel it — you experience the difficult moment as the affected clinician, from the inside. Then the camera flips — a colleague turns to you, and you become their first point of contact. You choose what to say, and the game shows you what each choice really does, not what you intended it to do.
It deliberately resists the idea of a perfect score. Some scenarios have no winning line: a good first point of contact does the right things — staying, listening, normalising, keeping the door open — whether or not they appear to “work” in the moment. Being present is the intervention.
Who it is for
- Clinicians at any stage who may one day be the person a colleague turns to — or who may need that person themselves.
- Teams and departments building a culture where reaching out early is normal, expected and easy.
- Educators and trainers looking for a safe, repeatable way to rehearse first-contact and peer-support conversations as part of non-technical-skills development.
Synthetic and educational
Everything in FirstPoint is fictional. The patients, colleagues and hospitals are invented for training; any characters you meet are synthetic. FirstPoint is an educational tool, not clinical guidance — it is for rehearsing how a conversation lands, not for directing real care or real decisions. It is best used as practice and reflection, ideally alongside the real support routes your workplace and your profession provide.