Abstract:

Cardiorespiratory arrest, acute myocardial infarction, stroke, burns, falls and choking in adults and children are common urgent and emergency situations and require immediate action. Considering that most of these events occur in an out-of-hospital environment, there is no doubt about the importance of educating the lay population about the management of the individual under these conditions. However, for effective training, it is necessary to make use of methodological resources that enhance the learning process and engage the participants. Given this, a great strategy is the escape game. In this type of game, the people involved are invited to solve puzzles in a transversal and collaborative way to escape from some place or situation, test their knowledge, organize their ideas and fix the content learned through the need to act in situations that simulate the reality. In this context, the present work aims to report the experience of educators from a private company specializing in health education on the use of the escape game as a methodological tool for training the lay population of a bicycle factory on First Aid. Our goal was to create a learning environment that would provide participants with the experience of putting into practice the skills taught during the theoretical part of the course. The environment used was the work environment of these people, which was divided into 5 stations that addressed the following topics: acute myocardial infarction and stroke, airway obstruction, burns, cardiorespiratory arrest and falls. These occurrences were portrayed in activities that happen daily during the work routine. Initially, the participants watched a dramatization performed by instructors on how to assist victims with the aforementioned occurrences. This stage lasted 60 minutes. Soon after, to participate in the escape game, the participants were divided into four groups with eight people in each. Before entering the first environment, the rules of the game and the challenges that participants had to reach were explained, in addition to the 60-minute time limit they would have to complete the entire process. All participated actively in all activities and showed satisfaction and excitement with the adopted methodology. After the completion of each group, the instructors discussed with the participants the performance of the group, reinforcing points in which they had greater difficulty. We observed that our work is in line with the evidence found in the literature that demonstrate the effectiveness of game-based learning interventions, as they allow the participant to carry out activities that lead them to think about what they are doing, favoring teamwork, leadership or knowing how to listen, see, ask and discuss. In addition, this type of game proves to be pleasant and challenging, which motivates those involved to seek solutions to the proposed puzzles. At the end of this experience, the participants reported that they felt as if they were really living these urgent and emergency situations and that after the training they felt safer to face these occurrences.

Keywords:

Escape game, teaching methodology, training, gamification.