Escape rooms in pharmacy education: More than just a game

An educational escape room is a form of game-based learning that has been shown to improve students' learning experience. A cardiovascular escape room was designed to promote the development of transversal skills and help students retain learned content knowledge in an integrated pharmacology and therapeutic unit in a Pharmacy course. This study aims to design, pilot, and evaluate the students' self-perceived transversal skills, learning experience and knowledge acquisition from a cardiovascular educational escape room. The model pharmacy at Curtin University was used as the room that students were challenged to escape. Students were required to acquire a four-digit safe code, with each digit derived from four separate briefcases containing different puzzles and clues. This code enabled students to unlock a lifesaving medication to successfully escape the room and rescue a fictional patient who had collapsed outside of the pharmacy. Each session was followed by a debrief to reflect on the learning experience. Fifty-four students participated in the study. Eight out of twelve groups successfully escaped the room. There was negligible difference in the score of the pre- and post-knowledge assessments. All students strongly agreed/agreed that the escape room was an effective way to review the cardiovascular content covered in the lecture and tutorial and that the activity should be continued for future students. Students perceived the education escape room as a valuable learning exercise to help them retain content knowledge and develop transversal skills in the learning of integrated pharmacology and therapeutic within a Pharmacy course. •Escape room gamification improves pharmacy student engagement.•Escape room gamification develops transversal skills in students.•Escape room gamification is a valuable learning exercise to help students retain content knowledge.