Research articleThe impact of using an “anatomy escape room” on nursing students: A comparative study
Section snippets
Background
In healthcare degree programmes, anatomy modules are generally taught at the beginning as an essential component of health education in order to ground basic knowledge in areas such as histology and gross anatomy, among others (Brown et al., 2017; Reinke, 2019). Indeed, without this knowledge, healthcare providers may be unable to effectively develop their clinical practice (Lewis et al., 2016). Although some anatomy-related teaching approaches have traditionally included various strategies
Aim
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the escape room for anatomy-related knowledge retention in nursing, as well as the perceived value of the game.
Design
In the first semesters of the academic years 2017–2018 and 2018–2019, a comparative cross-sectional study was conducted to answer the following research question: “How effective is a game-like design such as escape room to engage nursing students and promote anatomy-related knowledge retention?”. The study included two
The socio-demographic characteristics of the participants
The sample size included 248 first-year nursing students from the University of Almeria, with 51.6% (n = 128) belonging to the EG and 48.4% (n = 120) belonging to the CG. These groups were comprised of 77.8% (n = 193) females and 22.2% (n = 55) males, with a mean age of 19.59 ± 4.70 (ranged from 18 to 51 years old). In terms of the EG, 76.6% (n = 98) were females, while 23.4% (n = 30) were males. Similarly, females composed 79.2% (n = 95) of the population in the CG, while males constituted
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the escape room for anatomy-related knowledge retention in nursing, as well as the perceived value of the game. Our findings revealed that students who participated in the escape room for the final evaluation outperformed those who used a traditional-based evaluation. Despite the fact that different anatomy-related teaching approaches have been used, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use the escape room as an
Conclusions
For healthcare students, the escape room-based approach is a down-to-earth resource for learning and evaluating anatomy. This strategy has been demonstrated to be a motivating learning experience that supports students in recalling and applying what they have previously learned in class. In short, further exercises alike should be incorporated into anatomy learning and evaluation. The current study confirms that the use of this game-based method can be considered as a captivating and creative
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Guadalupe Molina-Torres: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Validation, Investigation, Project administration. Diana Cardona: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Validation, Investigation, Project administration. Mar Requena: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Miguel Rodriguez-Arrastia: Methodology, Supervision, Investigation. Pablo Roman: Methodology, Supervision, Investigation. Carmen
Declaration of competing interest
No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.
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2023, International Journal of Educational ResearchCitation Excerpt :Educational escape rooms have been implemented across various healthcare-related disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy (Dugnol-Menéndez et al., 2021; Faysal et al., 2022; Kavanaugh et al., 2020; Molina-Torres et al., 2021; Morrell & Eukel, 2021). Their use spans undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education (Cole & Ruble, 2021; Jambhekar et al., 2020; Molina-Torres et al., 2022). Diverse learning goals have been trained through the application of escape rooms, covering both ‘technical’ and ‘non-technical’ knowledge and skills.