Escape Rooms Provide Fun, Help Teach Anatomy Concepts Creatively

Rockville, Md. (June 17, 2025)-Virtual escape rooms focusing on anatomy education concepts provide medical students with a fun, creative and challenging way to engage with classroom material, improve their critical thinking, and identify gaps in knowledge. The case study is published in Advances in Physiology Education and has been chosen as an APSselect article for June.

Gamified learning-using gaming elements to enhance student engagement and motivation-is an increasingly growing trend in medical education, including escape rooms. In an escape room, participants must solve puzzles, riddles and answer questions in a certain amount of time to successfully leave the room, whether it be a physical room or virtual environment. Previous research has shown that escape room activities increase confidence, interpersonal communication and medical knowledge in students.

The study analyzes, compares and contrasts two escape rooms. Though both institutions used the same platform (Google Workspace), some of the same software (3D virtual images created in-house or viewed on Virtual Human Dissector, ChatGPT) and similar types of feedback surveys, the learning tools were different in many ways.

An abdominal anatomy escape room at Queens University Belfast in Northen Ireland, was projected from touchscreens in an anatomy lab. Participants gathered in person and teamed up in groups of two or three. They worked through a linear progression of questions, riddles, and jigsaw puzzles to decipher codes that allowed the hero of the scenario, an early-career doctor, to leave a gastroenterology clinic. The participants-medical students and professional staff members-needed to identify radiological and pathology images, answer multiple choice questions and tasks to complete the escape room in 35 minutes.

An upper limb anatomy escape room at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Virginia, was held remotely via Zoom. First- and second-year medical student participants worked individually in Zoom breakout rooms to answer questions and riddles, and interpret images of anatomical structures. Lettered pins marked structures that were relevant to the questions, which the participants could answer in a nonlinear manner. They had to form a 10-letter answer to escape the room within 50 minutes.

Feedback from both institutions' escape rooms showed that all participants enjoyed the activity, though the osteopathic students reported they would have preferred an in-person format rather than remote. However, from the physiology educator's perspective, a remote delivery provides more flexibility, which in turn promotes scalability of the activity.

The decision to develop individual versus team-based and linear versus nonlinear formats for gamified learning are also conscious choices that depend on the educator's goals. A linear game where participants aren't able to progress until they have completed a certain section may be preferred if educators want the students to understand how relevant concepts are linked together. Similarly, if faculty want to identify their students' knowledge gaps, requiring the students to work alone may be the best way to achieve that goal.

All escape room attendees reported that they liked "the creative nature of the puzzles and riddles that required them to think about the material in a new, engaging way," the researchers wrote.

Read the full article, "Virtual escape rooms in anatomy education: case studies from two institutions." It is highlighted as one of this month's "best of the best" as part of the American Physiological Society's APSselect program. Read this month's selected research articles.

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: To schedule an interview with a member of the research team, please contact APS Media Relations or call 301.634.7314. Find more research highlights in our Newsroom.

Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work.