Healthcare Simulation Escape Rooms are an interactive and immersive educational experience that blends the excitement of an escape room with the critical thinking, teamwork and problem-solving skills required for healthcare professionals. Healthcare simulation escape rooms continue to increase in popularity in the clinical simulation community. This article by Ein Carn-Bennett, RN, MSN will explore top tips of how to facilitate a healthcare simulation escape room experience. Considerations will be discussed for those currently in the facilitation role of escape rooms in a clinical simulation program. This article by Erin Cairn-Bennett, MSN, RN will explore top tips of how to facilitate a healthcare simulation escape room experience.
In a clinical simulation escape room, participants are put into a healthcare or non healthcare scenario where teamwork is required to solve puzzles, make decisions, and address challenges that often intentionally mirror medical situations in real life. The goal of an escape room is not just to “escape” but to manage the experience as an event, improve team collaboration, and sharpen team based skills in a safe yet simulated environment. Escape rooms are a gamified and fun learning experience for clinical simulation participants (and facilitators!).
The idea to integrate escape room principles into healthcare simulation as an educational experience emerged in the early 2010s. This was inspired through the increased popularity of physical escape rooms. Initially physical escape rooms were puzzle centered activities in which teams worked together in order to solve clues and “escape” before time ran out. Healthcare simulation educators began to explore how escape room elements could be adapted to be able to enhance teamwork education in high pressure medical environments. What was discovered was that there were many parallels between medical and non medical high pressure teamwork experiences that could be relayed back to critical incident teamwork principles outside of medicine.
History of Escape Rooms in Healthcare Simulation
By the mid-2010s, healthcare simulation escape rooms had started to appear in academic institutions, hospitals, and educational centers as a tool to improve communication, teamwork, and clinical decision-making under pressure. Modern escape rooms have the ability to focus not only on medical knowledge but also on other highly important soft skills such as leadership, teamwork, and crisis management. Escape rooms have since become an innovative method to prepare healthcare teams for real-world emergencies and to improve overall patient care outcomes.
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Escape rooms appeal to many types of learners in the healthcare simulation sphere. As escape rooms have increased in popularity outside of healthcare simulation, many people do escape rooms for fun with family and friends regularly. The younger learners are appealed by the fun and interactive nature of an escape room and parents of older children often complete escape rooms as a family. Some participants have had no exposure to escape rooms and may be quite confused by the experience, not too dissimilar to some other clinical or educational based experiences initially that needs to be overcome.
Clearly predefined learning objectives for an healthcare simulation escape room experience is key just as this is required for any clinical simulation experience. As an escape room facilitator ensure that predefined learning objectives match the style of the proposed escape room. Some potential but not limited to escape room options include: virtual, medical, non medical, part virtual part in person. Orientation for healthcare professionals to a new area can be completed well with a medical escape room to find objects and resources. This can make an incredibly dry and potentially boring educational session much more fun and interactive.
The Escape Room Facilitator Does Not Need to be an Escape Room Guru
As with all healthcare simulation educational experiences there needs to be an implicit trust in the clinical simulation scenario process and the predefined and prescribed modality of debrief. The escape room experience is just a reason to debrief the clinical simulation experience, no matter what the predefined learning objectives are. An escape room facilitator needs to exercise a lot of patience and trust of the facilitator role of the clinical simulation experience and lean on all the usual debrief framework pointers and to also debrief with good judgment.
As always with any healthcare simulation experience, the escape room scene should be set with an effective clinical simulation pre-brief which lays a solid foundation in psychological safety. The clinical simulation pre-brief should lay out any rules and guidance in relation to the escape room as well as an introduction into the escape room experience. The adult learner will also want to know information such as how long they have to complete the escape room.
Escape Room Debriefs Need a Structured Debrief Too
As with any other healthcare simulation experience, the scenario is an experience provided in order to be able to debrief. Therefore as a facilitator of an escape room, there should be a predefined debrief modality which has been decided as a plan to maximize the learning for the healthcare simulation escape room participants. An escape room is a great team experience to be utilized as a vessel to potentially improve team culture. Organizational culture can be improved through team based experiences and in the case of escape rooms, bonding that occurs through having fun together.
A deep trust in the predefined clinical simulation debrief framework and process is essential to an effective debrief experience. Often as teams that participate in healthcare simulation gain experience in healthcare simulation debriefs they will begin to debrief themselves. This occurs as clinical simulation participants more naturally make associations without prompts and may also include within a non medical clinical simulation escape room debrief.
This article has discussed the evolution of healthcare simulation escape rooms and some key pointers in how to facilitate the experience. A healthcare simulation escape room can be a fun yet profound way for the adult learner to acquire more clinical knowledge and team based skills. The best part of an escape room for clinical simulation participants is the adult learners experiencing more play and fun in their day and provision of an experience that can add to a more positive team based culture. The sky is the limit in terms of content to be included in an escape room for healthcare simulation participants, so long as the learning objectives continue to remain central to the experience alongside a predefined debrief modality.
