Design of a disaster preparedness escape room for first and second-year pharmacy students

Background and purpose: Educational escape rooms assist students with the development of teamwork, augmentation of problem-solving skills, and reinforcement of key course concepts. In this report, we examined the feasibility of creating a bioterror preparedness escape room in a small enrollment pharmacy public health elective course. Educational activity and setting: A bioterror preparedness escape room was developed for pharmacy students in a health elective course. The instructional objectives of training students in disaster preparedness were assessed via group readiness assessment tests in the scenario and individual readiness assessment tests after the completion of the activity. Findings: Twenty-eight students participated in the escape room activity in groups of 6 to 8 students (n = 4 observations) and all groups escaped. Student performance was higher on the initial attempts of three group readiness assessment tests (88 +/- 16.0%, 82 +/- 7.1%, 78 +/- 12.0%) than in the final individual readiness assessment test (73.4 +/- 20.4%). Students indicated that they found the educational escape room to be enjoyable (95.7%) and felt that all members of the team were involved in solving the problems (86.9%). Summary: A disaster preparedness educational escape room was designed and implemented in a public health elective for pharmacy students. Findings indicate that the educational escape room format is an effective method for reinforcing course content, however additional improvements could be made to the instructional design to enhance individual student knowledge retention.