Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University is launching its first escape room experience designed to provide physician assistant students with hands-on learning in an urgent care clinic simulation.
The escape room will open for one day at the FranU Simulated Environment Teaching Hospital, allowing 29 physician assistant students to participate in a one-hour innovative hands-on training session that evaluates critical thinking, teamwork and real-world medical skills.
Students will be split into two groups, each asked to collaborate to take a comprehensive patient history, perform physical examinations and analyze clues to form a diagnosis. They will be required to work together and order lab tests and diagnostics that accurately diagnose the patient to escape the room.
“The students going through the escape room have completed their clinical phase, so they are about to graduate in May,” FranU Physician Assistant Program Director Josselin Carter tells Daily Report. “This is a good way to assess their overall ability to apply medical knowledge, patient care and clinical decision-making in a safe environment and make it fun.”
Students will use clues and patient history to diagnose a high-fidelity mannequin with sepsis. After the students escape, they will have a debriefing session to discuss the plan of care, treatment protocols for sepsis and the responsibilities health care providers have in suspected abuse or neglect cases. The escape room sessions will be recorded, allowing students to review their performance and identify areas of improvement.
Carter says she hopes to continue offering escape room experiences for students in the future, adjusting the disease diagnosis based on the program’s objectives.
