Early exposure to interprofessional learning can strengthen students’ readiness to work in team-based clinical environments. Active learning activities, such as educational escape rooms, may provide opportunities for students to practice interprofessional problem solving and teamwork. The purpose of this study was to assess feasibility and readiness for interprofessional learning following a human physiology escape room. We hypothesized that the escape room would be feasible, and that scores on the readiness for interprofessional learning scale (RIPLS) would increase following the activity. Five undergraduate students (male = 1, female = 4, age = 21 ± 1.5 years) interested in health science careers participated in a cardiovascular themed escape room alongside graduate and medical students. Participants completed pre and post activity surveys that included feasibility questions and the 19 question RIPLS rated on a Likert scale. The RIPLS was analyzed as an overall score (all questions) and broken into subdomains regarding teamwork and collaboration (questions 1 to 9), professional identity (questions 10 to 16), and roles and responsibilities (questions 17 to 19). Pre-survey and post-survey responses were compared using a paired t-test. The participants rated the escape room as feasible and highly recommended the activity to other students (rating of 4.8 out of 5). The overall score of the RIPLS did not significantly increase after the escape room (Pre: 74.4 ± 2.3 vs. Post: 80.6 ± 6.9, p=0.147). There were also no significant changes in the teamwork and collaboration subdomain (Pre: 38.8 ± 1.8 vs. Post: 40.2 ± 3.6, p=0.475) or the roles and responsibilities subdomain (Pre: 9.2 ± 0.8 vs. Post: 9.8 ± 1.5, p=0.573). In addition, changes in the professional identity subdomain scores did not reach the threshold for significance (Pre: 26.4 ± 0.9 vs. Post: 30.6 ± 3.1, p=0.061). However, there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-survey and post-survey responses in the question “It is not necessary for undergraduate/postgraduate health and social care students/professionals to learn together” (Pre: 3.4 ± 0.5 vs. Post: 4.4 ± 0.5, p=0.034), suggesting that more students disagreed with that statement after the experience. Overall, these findings suggest an educational escape room with undergraduate, graduate and medical students is feasible and would be recommended to other students. Although the overall and subdomain scores on the RIPLS did not improve after the escape room experience, participants reported stronger agreement that it is necessary for health and social care students to be learning together. Escape rooms may be a beneficial way to improve collaboration, professionalism, and responsibility in clinical learning environments. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Olson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.