Engage,educate,escape: The New Jersey Department of Health Project Firstline Escape Room

Abstract

Objective:

Participating in an escape room is not just an entertainment but can also be a form of education. Because of this, the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH), Project Firstline (PFL) created an escape room interactive training tool and skills-building exercise to encourage the identification and use of key infection control principles by current and future healthcare workers.

Design and Setting:

PFL is a US initiative that aims to provide infection prevention and control (IPC) knowledge to frontline healthcare workers. This article details health educators’ descriptions and experiences of an escape room developed as part of this initiative; guidance on how to incorporate this modality of learning into present and future teaching; and assessment data and feedback from participants to begin to understand the impact and effectiveness of this approach to learning.

Methods:

A total of 8 sessions, conducted in 3 locations, with 64 participants, yielded survey assessment data from 41 participants.

Results:

Quantitative results indicated that participants were highly satisfied with the escape room experience and reported an increased level of knowledge after participation. In addition, participants reported extremely high levels of intention to implement the training they received, and all would recommend the escape room experience to a friend or a colleague. Qualitative data supports the overall findings and provides specific examples of how participants said they would implement the knowledge they learned, along with additional positive feedback.

Conclusion:

Current and continuing efforts to promote PFL’s escape room are described, along with improvements and future actions.

Keywords

Educational escape room health education infection prevention and control interactive learning Project Firstline

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aaron

(2017) Why educational escape rooms will benefit students in the long run. Linkedin, 31 July. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-educational-escape-rooms-benefit-students-long-run-mara/

Al-Natour

AlNatour

Ali

, et al. (2021) Students’ perceptions and experiences in a health promotion course using interactive learning. Heliyon 7(6): e07192.

Bandura

(1986) Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

DATAUSE: The College of New Jersey (2021) Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Fall Enrollment. Available at: https://datausa.io/profile/university/the-college-of-new-jersey#:~:text=The%20College%20of%20New%20Jersey%20had%20a%20total%20enrollment%20of,Jersey%20are%20enrolled%20full%2Dtime

Hake

(1998) Interactive-engagement vs. traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics 66: 64–74.

Hall

(2021) Planning Your Escape: Strategy Secrets to Make You an Escape Room Superstar. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Hallaway

(2015) What is a ‘room escape’? Geek & Sundry. Available at: https://geekandsundry.com/what-is-a-room-escape/

Hawthorne

(2021) Understanding the importance of motivation in education. High Speed Training, 17 November. Available at: https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/motivation-in-education/

Oleksewich

(2021) Escape the classroom: The pedagogical benefits and caveats of escape room design and implementation in the secondary English classroom. Master’s Thesis, Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, BC, Canada. Available at: https://education.ok.ubc.ca/student-resources/graduate-student-resources/capstone-projects/escape-the-classroom-the-pedagogical-benefits-and-caveats-of-escape-room-design-and-implementation-in-the-secondary-english-classroom/

10.

Saloner

Wilk

Levin

(2020) Community health centers and access to care among underserved populations: A synthesis review. Medical Care Research and Review 77(1): 3–18.

11.

Schlosser

(2018) Geek of the week: There’s no escaping it – Puzzle break’s Nate Martin created his dream startup. GeekWire, 22 June. Available at: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/nate-martin/

12.

Skinner

Belmont

(1993) Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of Educational Psychology 85(4): 571–581.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.44 MB