An Escape Room to Teach First- and Second-Year Medical Students Nephrology

Jonathan Hu; Mikayla Sonnleitner; Edward Weldon; Sameer Kejriwal; Bryan Brown; Ashish Shah

doi:10.1007/s40670-023-01917-6

An Escape Room to Teach First- and Second-Year Medical Students Nephrology

Med Sci Educ. 2023 Oct 13;34(1):71-76. doi: 10.1007/s40670-023-01917-6. eCollection 2024 Feb.

Authors

Jonathan Hu¹, Mikayla Sonnleitner¹, Edward Weldon¹, Sameer Kejriwal¹, Bryan Brown^{1

2}, Ashish Shah³

Affiliations

¹ University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, HI USA.
² The Queen's Medical Center, Honolulu, HI USA.
³ San Diego School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA USA.

PMID: 38510392
PMCID: PMC10948694 (available on 2025-02-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s40670-023-01917-6

Abstract

An escape room is a team-based activity that requires players to solve a series of puzzles to complete a story and "break out" of a room. It has recently gained traction in medical education for its ability to interactively and effectively present learning objectives. This was a prospective educational study that describes the successful application of a nephrology themed escape room for first- and second-year medical students. Compared to pre-escape room participation, the 52 students demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in self-reported knowledge for renal physiology (p < 0.01), pharmacology (p < 0.01), pathology (p < 0.01), and relevant clinical practice guidelines (p < 0.01). A majority of the students also claimed that the escape room was "more effective" than traditional lectures (80.8%) and textbooks (73.1%) and "equally effective" as third-party board preparation resources (69.2%) and their institution's problem-based learning curriculum (51.9%). The escape room also facilitated a high-level peer-to-peer collaboration with 82.7% and 76.9% of students reporting that they worked with someone in their year and outside of their year for at least half of the game, respectively. Ninety-five percent of the first-years and 84.6% of the second-years believed that the escape room was effective at preparing them for their respective exams, and an overwhelming majority (90.4%) described the escape room as "very enjoyable." Overall, this nephrology themed escape room was an engaging and well received educational modality and may be an effective supplemental study resource for medical students. Further studies are needed to assess knowledge acquisition.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01917-6.

Keywords: Escape room; Game-based learning; Medical education; Nephrology.

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