Using an Escape Room for Teaching Patient Safety

Background Academic institutions in the United States continue to struggle with increasing the rate of patient safety event reporting by trainees. Objective To describe the development and implementation of 2 escape room cases with the goal of improving resident reporting of adverse events, reporting participant teamwork and communication skills, and describing feasibility and acceptability data. Methods We developed 2 high-fidelity medical simulation cases via group consensus from an interprofessional team as part of a required quality improvement curriculum for all graduate medical education learners. Senior residents and fellows from all training programs at a single university were recruited to participate. We utilized the New World Kirkpatrick Model levels 1-2 as our program evaluation framework to analyze data from participants between 2022 and 2023. Surveys were collected via an online survey tool immediately prior to and following the event. Results Over 2 years, 130 learners participated in the escape room event (78 residents [60%] and 52 fellows [40%] across 15 specialties/subspecialties). One hundred twenty-four (95%) completed the post-event survey. Eighty-four percent (104 of 124) reported they had never submitted a patient safety event report prior to this activity. All strongly agreed or agreed this educational activity had clear goals and was organized, 94% (117 of 124) felt the escape error room was relevant to their needs as a physician in training, and 83% (103 of 124) reported greater likelihood of submitting an event report in the future. Cost was $6 per learner. Conclusions This educational modality demonstrated feasibility and acceptability and improved overall willingness to submit future patient safety event reports.