A great escape

Parts of Bannatyne campus were recently turned into a multi-site escape room for students in six different health programs.  

The three-hour collaborative learning experience on Sept. 11 was hosted by the Office of Interprofessional Collaboration (OIPC), and brought together 210 first- and second-year students from the pharmacy, dentistry, dental hygiene, physical therapy, respiratory therapy and physician assistant programs at the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Students were presented with a primary care case that required different roles and professions to work together to meet the needs of a fictional patient. The teams started at the College of Pharmacy’s Apotex Centre but had to make their way through other buildings on campus as they solved pieces of the puzzle.

The innovative escape room experience was developed by Dr. Amanda Condon, head of family medicine, Max Rady College of Medicine, with Rebecca Mueller and Steven Piotrowski from the master of physician assistant studies (MPAS) program.  

“It doesn’t matter what level of training you’re at,” Condon said. “You could have a first-year student and a faculty member on the same team, and they would still have a puzzle experience worth debriefing, regardless of their clinical expertise or understanding of their professional identity and role.” 

The team previously ran a few pilot versions, including one with clinicians at a conference in Portugal last year and another with a smaller group of Rady Faculty students in February.  

Dr. Laura MacDonald and Michelle Boyce, OIPC leads for dentistry/dental hygiene and pharmacy respectively, participated in the February pilot and collaborated with a team that included OIPC leads Moni Fricke (physical therapy) and Sandra Biesheuvel (respiratory therapy) to embed it into an interprofessional education session.  

This was the first time the activity was run with a large group, which was broken up into 30 interprofessional teams of approximately seven students. The event was supported by 23 facilitators.  

“For an event like this, it takes a team—a dedicated and passionate team—and what a team it was with fun in learning as a key driver,” MacDonald said.

The session also included a visual art activity requiring teams paint an image of how they saw interprofessional collaboration on a blank puzzle canvas. The teams then took part in a debrief session, where they related the session’s experience to teamwork, communication and interprofessional collaboration.  

Comments from the debrief included, “we looked at the challenge from our unique perspectives – through that we all lead in different ways” and “sometimes there are disagreements, but it is important to work through them respectfully and be honest with one another.”

Students find activity challenging and fun

Second-year physical therapy student Kirstin Maharajh said it was fun to work with students from other programs to solve a puzzle just moments after meeting for the first time.

“We all used our different disciplines to solve each riddle or clue. It was really cool to see the spaces they study in and understand a bit better what they do,” she said.

Hannah Storsley, a second-year pharmacy student, and Jonnah Pusung, a second-year respiratory therapy student, worked together in a team and found the activity both challenging and fun.

“We missed our first QR code, which was the main key for the next steps … but we all put our brains together and ended up doing it properly,” Storsley said.

“I would say a big takeaway is that sometimes small details can really be the key and skipping over details can cause challenges in the future,” added Pusung. 

Boyce said it’s important to include fun in interprofessional activities, while also focusing on core competencies like communication and team functioning.

“The escape room gives them the opportunity to practice the skills we teach them, but in a fun, low-stakes environment so they can enjoy it without having to be stressed about the clinical piece of it. They can relax and actually practice good collaborative teamwork,” she said.

The team is planning more interprofessional escape room events, including one for Rady faculty, and another for students in programs that were unable to participate in the Sept. 11 session.