St. Joseph Medical Center uses escape room to enhance skills review

St. Joseph Medical Center took a break from traditional policy review and used an escape room to increase participant satisfaction in its weeklong nursing skills review in June.

July 19, 2021Penn State Health Daily Brief

The annual review, which gives nursing assistants, surgical technicians, Emergency Room technicians and transporters the opportunity to review policies, procedures and expectations, is required every year for all health care providers by The Joint Commission.

'We first used an escape room in our skills review with our registered nurses in 2020,' said Tiffany Jackson, a clinical nurse educator at St. Joseph. 'They really enjoyed this different type of learning experience and suggested we include one that everyone could participate in for 2021.'

In follow-up to the recent roll out of its Behavioral Emergency Response Team (BERT), Jackson said St. Joseph chose to focus this year's escape room on the do's and don'ts of therapeutic communication.

'It was all about behavioral health, therapeutic communication and when it is appropriate to call the BERT team versus our Code Green,' she said, explaining that participants faced an intoxicated patient placed in soft-arm restraints in the escape room. 'The idea was to have participants interact with the patient. Although the patient initially was calm, the patient became unsatisfied and started to verbally escalate throughout the exercise.'

Each time the participants correctly completed an activity, they earned a key that unlocked a piece of the puzzle letting them advance to the next level until they won release from the room.

'We take anywhere from four to six participants into the escape room at a time, yet everyone's experience is unique,' Jackson said. 'Every person leaves with a different experience but the same goal of knowing when to use the BERT team and the proper policy and procedures that go along with restraints.'

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