Twelve tips for creating an escape room activity for medical education

Abstract

Communication, teamwork, and resilience all require active practice by healthcare teams. Games such as escape rooms can add variety, interactivity, and value to teaching sessions. Escape room activities typically include a variety of sequential puzzles that lead participants to break free of a room, or can be adapted into an 'escape box' challenge where participants work to successfully unlock a box. Escape room or escape box exercises can help healthcare teams develop and enhance team skills, as well as reinforce medical knowledge. We developed an escape box session to teach and reinforce organizational Safety II principles and the resilience potentials: monitor, respond, learn, and anticipate. We report 12 tips to effectively organize and develop an escape room or escape box activity for multidisciplinary healthcare teams.