Pearls from Your Peers: Otolaryngology Escape Room Experience

What is an educational escape room? 
An escape room experience is an interactive, themed game in which a group of participants work together to solve a series of puzzles, riddles, and challenges within a set time limit. 

Participants at the AAO-HNSF 2025 Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO escape room experience.What inspired the idea to create “A Puzzling Night on Call,” an educational escape room, for the Annual Meeting? 
I have a strong interest in game-based learning, and I had heard about the use of escape rooms in the nursing field. I thought an escape room would be a great way to marry the idea of game-based learning and education to help break up the routine of lecture-based education. The Annual Meeting seemed like a great opportunity because the escape room would appeal to varying levels of learners.

What is the escape room experience like for participants?
It’s a fun, fast-paced experience that challenges their otolaryngology and pop culture knowledge in a nontraditional way using puzzles, games, and skill-based stations. The focus is on fun and entertainment using their existing knowledge as opposed to a summative assessment.

Each station has a clue or riddle to an overarching mystery diagnosis that each team must solve to exit the escape room experience.What types of activities or challenges do participants experience?
The stations are based on participants’ otolaryngology skills and knowledge with varying focus on the different subspecialties of otolaryngology. Some use existing game formats that participants are familiar with, whereas some are completely de novo puzzles or activities. Several themes are woven through the escape room. One is the idea of competition against other teams with a time-based score that makes the experience rapid paced and exciting. The other is the concept of “a night on call” with stations reflecting different subspecialties of otolaryngology. Additionally, each station has a clue or riddle to an overarching mystery diagnosis that each team must solve to exit the escape room experience.

How does this format compare with didactics or workshops?
This is a far departure from didactics or workshops in the sense that the focus is on making this feel not like a didactic or an assessment of knowledge, but an application of knowledge and skills to perform your best. Those who have more knowledge will perform better, but everyone can have fun at the escape room experience!

Participants rely on teamwork and communication, novel problem solving, logic and reasoning, and otolaryngology-associated skills.What are some of the key skills you hope participants will gain from the escape room?
Teamwork and communication, novel problem solving, logic and reasoning, and otolaryngology-associated skills such as bronchoscopy with foreign body removal. 

How does the escape room experience accommodate different levels of experience? 
The escape room is fun regardless of your level of knowledge or skill. The experience caters to mixed levels of experience such that collaboration will lead to constructive problem solving.

What have you learned from organizing the escape room?
An engaged and creative group of collaborators is key. Focusing on making the experience fun is paramount. With the dedicated and creative group of faculty we have, planning has gotten easier and more innovative each year. 

What would you say to a meeting attendee thinking about attending the escape room?
Try it out at the AAO-HNSF 2026 Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO in Los Angeles next October! Make your own assessment of the experience and think about bringing this back to your own work setting.

Escape Room Experience winners (left to right): Prashanth Prabakaran, MD, Max DeHaan, MD, Justin Graff, MD, and Nihar Rama.