Learning medicolegal concepts through a unique team-based escape room experience

The changing medicolegal landscape invites a carpe diem review of existing medical education. To promote learning of commonly encountered medicolegal concepts in clinical practice through a safe and interactive learning environment, we propose a unique experiential and gamified educational curriculum integrating an escape room and a flipped classroom concept. A pilot study was conducted with 25 fourth-year undergraduate medical students grouped into 6 teams from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Key medicolegal concepts involved included topics on mental capacity, consent-taking and doctor-patient communication. Before attempting the escape room, they were given pre-reading materials and encouraged to watch short video clips on the topics. Various tasks were played out in the escape room through a modified patient journey, such as problem-solving, observing doctor-patient consultations and reviewing case notes. Students would be expected to apply what they had learnt to give an account and evaluation of their observations throughout the patient journey. The activity would conclude with a session debrief when students were invited to share their reflection and learning experience. Pre- and post-activity questionnaires were administered to assess outcome parameters. Feedback had been overwhelmingly positive, for example: 90.9% of participants now better understood the medicolegal concepts taught. Compared to other learning modalities, over 91% of participants ranked the escape room as their most preferred method of learning about medicolegal concepts, and would recommend the escape room as a learning activity. 96% of participants were more motivated to learn more about medicolegal concepts. Post-activity knowledge score was high at 11 out of 15 marks. An overwhelming majority (92%) also agreed that a team-based participation in the escape room had enhanced their learning. Through the promotion of critical thinking and collaborative learning, participants had found it to be an overall novel experience which brought alive important and relevant medicolegal concepts, the experience of which had enhanced learning as compared to traditional means of teaching and learning. The escape room can provide an effective, experiential and enjoyable mode of learning and teaching medicolegal concepts among medical students. Application of its concept in other aspects of medical education may be further explored.