Creating and running an escape room for healthcare curricula: AMEE Guide No. 168

Abstract

In this guide we provide instructions and recommendations about creating and running escape rooms for healthcare education. In recent years there has been a growing interest in adopting escape rooms as an educational tool to be included in healthcare curricula, and we attempt to explain why and how these tools are fit for the particularities of this type of education. We first describe the steps that a design team will have to follow to create an educational escape room from scratch, from core characteristics like target audience and learning goals to actual puzzle design and testing. We then continue by providing recommendations to operators and lecturers about how to run such escape room as part of an overall teaching session that also includes a lecture, briefing, debriefing and evaluation. We finalise this guide by listing a set of tools for validating and evaluating these types of escape rooms.

Keywords:

• Teaching & learning
• methods
• learning outcomes
• curriculum
• evaluation

Disclosure statement

This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Additional information

Funding

This guide has been developed as part of the Escape4Health project [Erasmus+ 2020-1-ES01-KA203-083263]. The Escape4Health project has been funded with support from the European Commission as part of the Erasmus + Programme.

Notes on contributors

Alvaro Fides-Valero

Alvaro Fides-Valero is a senior developer and researcher at the SABIEN research group of the ITACA institute, Universitat Politècnica de València.

Lucy Bray

Lucy Bray, MBBS (Hons), MSc, FHEA, is a public health registrar and medical educator, working as the project lead for educational escape rooms at the Copenhagen Academy for Medical Education and Simulation.

Peter Dieckmann

Peter Dieckmann, PhD, is a work and organisational psychologist, senior scientist in the Copenhagen Academy for Medical Education and Simulation, Denmark, and Professor of Healthcare Education and Patient Safety with the University in Stavanger, Norway.

Panagiotis Antoniou

Panagiotis Antoniou, PhD, MSc, is a Laboratory Reader in Medical Physics and Senior Post-doctoral Research Associate in Medical Education at the Lab of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s School of Medicine.

Pia Lahtinen

Pia Lahtinen is a senior lecturer in the Laurea University of applied sciences in Finland.

Panagiotis Bamidis

Panagiotis Bamidis is a Professor of Medical Physics, Informatics and Medical Education and Director of the Lab of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s School of Medicine.

Maria Nikolaidou

Maria Nikolaidou is a Research Associate at the Lab of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation in the School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.