Learning good manufacturing practices in an escape room: Validation of a new pedagogical tool

Abstract

Introduction Chemotherapies are handled using Good Manufacturing Practices, which ensure asepsis and high-quality production. Continuous education is compulsory and usually includes theoretical and practical exercises. Objectives This work aimed to validate an innovative method of teaching good manufacturing practices based on an escape room mixing simulation and gaming. Method Pairs of learners were locked in a simulated clean room (Esclean Room) and had 1 hour to produce a chemotherapy and escape by finding solutions to 23 “Good Manufacturing Practices mysteries” linked to combination locks. To measure the experiment’s impact on teaching, questionnaires including the 23 mysteries (in different orders) were filled in before, just after and one month after escape from the Esclean Room. Pharmacy staff’ degrees of certainty were noted for each question. A satisfaction survey was completed. Results Seventy-two learners (29% senior pharmacists, 14% junior pharmacists, and 57% pharmacy technicians) escaped the Esclean Room and 56 answered every questionnaire. The educational intervention resulted in increases in correct answers and certainty. Correct answers rose from 57% in the first questionnaire to 80% in the third ( p < 0.001). Certainty scores rose from 50% before the experiment to 70% one month afterwards ( p < 0.001). Despite 68% of learners having never taken part in an escape room game before, 79% liked this educational method. Conclusion This study built and tested a pedagogical escape room involving a high risk, professional, pharmacy process. The use of this pharmacy technology simulation had a positive impact on pharmacy staff theoretical knowledge.

A review on use of escape rooms in education – touching the void

“…Several articles added informal observational impressions to this body of feedback (e.g. Adams et al, 2018;Berthod et al, 2019), whereas others relied solely on informal observations by the authors themselves (Brown, Darby, & Coronel, 2019;Kinio, Dufresne, Brandys, & Jetty, 2018). This is valuable information, especially in the phase where one is curious about what an escape room is and how such a didactic tool is received by the students.…”

“…Despite the enthusiasm for and promising reports about use of escape room (e.g. Berthod et al, 2019;Cain, 2019;Eukel, Frenzel, & Cernusca, 2017;Garwood, 2020), not enough is known about the use of escape rooms in education. Examining the use of escape rooms in empirical research into teaching and learning will be helpful for identifying the future implications of escape rooms for educational purposes.…”

“…This review article focuses on the research interests of empirical projects that have studied the use of escape rooms for educational purposes. We include projects that have taken a mixed-methods approach (Ferreiro-González et al, 2019;Veldkamp et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2018), case studies where the priority of the escape room content was to connect professional realism to the teaching (Berthod et al, 2019;Clauson et al, 2019;Eukel et al, 2017), and studies that have focused more on the 21st-century skills gained in the escape room setting than on the school subjects involved (Duncan, 2020;Kutzin, 2019). In this review, we aim to address the emerging and, at present, unstructured body of research on the use of escape rooms in education by bringing together and synthesising the research, with an emphasis on the implications of the use of escape rooms for teaching and learning.…”

Escape room in education: a bibliometric study

“…In terms of benefits obtained by the participating students, we can highlight the promotion of communication and group dynamics, the increase in commitment and attention or problem-solving skills (Ross & Bell, 2019), the improvement of learning (Berthod, Bouchoud, Grossrieder, Falaschi, Senhaji & Bonnabry, 2019;Franco & DeLuca, 2019;Novak, Lozos & Spear, 2019) or student motivation too (Kinio, Dufresne, Brandys & Jetty, 2019). Likewise, the potential of this activity is affirmed as an innovative educational tool (Ferreiro-González, et al, 2019).…”

Efficiency of four solutions in removing 23 conventional antineoplastic drugs from contaminated surfaces

“…This study also underlines the importance of operator training so as to standardise decontamination and establish the most efficient procedure which takes into account the duality of handling hazardous and sterile drugs. A new pedagogical tool could be formulated to this end [42].…”