WE3.8 Surgical Escape Rooms: A Novel Approach for teaching surgical skills

Abstract

Abstract Aim Escape rooms are a novel form of a practical teaching and simulation demonstrated to be effective in medical education. We compared the effectiveness of the traditional didactic teaching compared to a novel escape room style teaching of basic surgical skills Method A crossover study was delivered to two groups of third year medical students. Each group received either the classroom based teaching or the escape room teaching first, were assessed, then received the remaining style. Each student was asked to complete a questionnaire before the session, then after each teaching session. Teaching covered interrupted suturing, simple wound management and administration of local anaesthesia. Assessment was undertaken with confidence scoring with Likert scales, a 10 questions quiz and 5 minute suturing assessment after each teaching session. Results 24 third year medical students attended. 100% either agreed or strongly agreed the classroom teaching was useful, compared to 75% for the escape room. 79% either agree or strongly agree that escape room style teaching is a useful adjunct to the traditional teaching. 21% either strongly agree or agree they felt confident about suturing before the session compared to 88%. The average number of correctly answered questions were 8 post teaching sessions, compared to 5 post escape rooms. The mean number of correctly applied sutures were 3 post teaching sessions compared to 2 post escape rooms. Conclusion Traditional practical teaching is still the preferred method of teaching and effective form of teaching. Although escape room teaching is a useful adjunct to the traditional classroom based surgical teaching.