M5: Blog Post 4- Nursing Education through Escape Rooms

 

Nursing Education with New Literacies through Gamification: Escape Room Implementation

A topic that interests me as a nursing educator and what I am thinking about basing my final project on is the integration of escape rooms. This approach to active learning stands out to me because it fosters critical thinking, collaboration, and clinical decision-making in a dynamic and engaging format. Unlike traditional educational methods, escape rooms simulate realistic scenarios that require nursing students and practicing nurses to apply their knowledge and skills to reinforce essential content in a student-led, enjoyable way.

At Alfred State College, escape rooms could be used in the nursing skills lab to evaluate skill performance and reinforce these key concepts in areas such as medication safety, patient prioritization, and emergency response protocols. For the medical-surgical nurses at Jones Memorial Hospital, these activities could be adapted for continuing education, competency assessments and provide the opportunity for nursing staff to refresh their clinical skills as well as strengthen teamwork and collaboration in a low-stress/low-risk learning environment.

The creation and use of gamification, specifically through escape rooms, would allow me to design curriculum-aligned and evidence-based practice activities that support both student learning outcomes and professional development. By incorporating this approach into my teaching, I can create an impact that could lead to improved clinical preparedness, confidence, and communication among both student nurses and practicing staff. Escape rooms have the potential to align education with the realities of solving complex patient care challenges in a fun, memorable and effective way.

 

Çakmak, B., & Kaymaz, T. T. (2024). The effect of an escape room game on students’ academic self-efficacy and motivation for critical thinking: Oncology nursing course. BMC Nursing, 23, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02586-5

            Çakmak and Kaymaz explore and evaluate the use of an escape room game within an oncology nursing education course to enhance critical thinking and academic self-efficacy in learning. Students were engaged in a gamified learning environment in which they needed to solve puzzles and challenges about theoretical and practical knowledge of oncology nursing topics. Students were motivated and had increased confidence in succeeding academically in oncology nursing care after completing each escape room task. Results of the study revealed that integrating gamification through an educational escape room promoted deeper student engagement and made a complex nursing curricular topic of oncology, more accessible and realistic to clinical scenarios. There was significant improvement in both critical thinking and student satisfaction from that of traditional learning styles.

 

Feng, X., Zhou, C., Gao, Y., & Ma, X. (2024). The pilot application of escape rooms as a method to evaluate basic nursing skills: A qualitative study of student experiences. BMC Nursing, 23, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02630-4

            Researchers conducted a qualitative study that examined how escape rooms could be used as an alternative assessment tool in nursing education to evaluate basic nursing skills. Feng et al. conducted focus group interviews of nursing students who participated in a pilot escape room designed to simulate real-world patient scenarios encompassing tasks that required foundational nursing knowledge and skills application. Students expressed how the escape room was engaging, realistic, provided a stress-free method of learning and helped them feel more prepared for the healthcare setting. The study was shown to foster teamwork, improve motivation and collaboration among students in problem-solving. Researchers also noted that integration of escape rooms has the potential to provide a supportive and more realistic environment for skills evaluation in comparison to traditional methods. While researchers believe escape rooms have great potential in breaking traditional nursing educational norms, there is a need for further evaluation and refinement to ensure consistency and alignment with curriculum goals.

 

Garwood, J. (2020). Escape to learn! An innovative approach to engage students in learning. Journal of Nursing Education, 59(5), 278-282. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20200422-08

In this article, Garwood explains the design and implementation of an escape room activity integrated into a nursing fundamentals course as well as the value connected to this diverse learning approach. The escape room activity created covered key nursing concepts such as safe medication administration to reinforce previous theoretical and practical knowledge. Garwood also shared that student feedback after completion of the escape room activity was extremely positive, and learners indicated that the escape room experience was fun, memorable and allowed them to critically think in a more dynamic and interactive way. Students felt encouraged and enjoyed how the escape room involved team collaboration. The escape room promoted active learning, enhanced student engagement, and knowledge retention of nursing content while increasing student satisfaction. Escape rooms that necessitate students to collaborate to solve riddles, problems and puzzles while ensuring to “escape” in time is an innovative to enhance student learning.

 

Haley, B., & Palmer, J. (2020). Escape tasks: An innovative approach in nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 59(11), 655-657. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20201020-11

            Haley and Palmer explored the implementation of “escape tasks” within classroom and nursing lab sessions designed to provide similar student learning outcomes to full escape rooms, but with a scaled-down alternative approach. These smaller escape tasks reinforced nursing concepts, allowed students to apply clinical reasoning and collaborate with their classroom peers, without requiring an extensive setup of a full escape room. Tasks were integrated throughout teaching sessions involving timed, puzzle-based activities that permitted an interactive and participatory environment. Haley and Palmer expressed that embedding these smaller escape tasks provided an effective teaching strategy that could be easily adapted to various nursing content.

 

Seymour, A., Borggren, M., & Baker, R. (2023). Escape the monotony: Gamification enhances nursing education. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 49(6), 805-810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jen.2023.06.004

Seymour et al. studied gamification through a developed escape room that focused on emergency nursing with realistic patient situations that required nursing students to problem-solve, critically think, apply clinical judgement and perform necessary response skills under a time constraint. Researchers found that gamification through escape rooms that aligned with course objectives, promoted student-centered instruction, active learning and better prepared future nurses for high-pressure clinical environments by simulating real-world scenarios within a controlled and supportive learning environment. The study found that escape rooms assisted students in retaining and applying information in a memorable, interactive, and fun way. Similar to the other studies listed, researchers mention improved communication and collaboration skills among nursing students, making this an even more valuable teaching strategy as strong teamwork is essential to patient care outcomes within emergency room settings.