Implementation of a Virtual Escape Room Into a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows National Course: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: Escape Rooms in medical education have been shown to improve learner satisfaction and reinforce knowledge in pulmonary and critical care medicine, yet virtual escape rooms (VER) as instructional strategies have remained understudied.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate participants' perception and knowledge acquisition after completing a VER as part of a national fellows' course.

METHODS: We designed a prospective study conducted during the 2022 CHEST Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellow's Virtual course. This was a 2-day back-to-back national course targeting pulmonary and critical care fellows. The course had 5 virtual and 1 VER session, each lasting 50 min. A pre- and post-course knowledge assessment included 9 clinical questions (1 for each of the 5 virtual sessions and 4 for the VER session). A summative score and an individual session score were obtained. Participant's VER perceptions were analyzed using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree).

RESULTS: Fifty-nine (34.5%) of the 165-course participants completed the pre-test, and 29 (17.8%) completed the post-course test. Higher clinical knowledge assessment total score and VER scores were seen in the post-test compared to the pre-test (77.8 ± 14.9 vs 59.6 ± 23.1 P < .001) and (77.3 ± 26.6 vs 62.5 ± 32.5, P < .05) respectively. VER perceptions in the course were positive across participants and sustained after deployment.

CONCLUSIONS: Implementing an educational VER in a national pulmonary and critical care fellows' virtual course may promote knowledge acquisition and could potentially lead to a positive perception among participants. Longitudinal studies in various contexts are required to further elucidate direct causality between gamification and learner centric outcomes.