Escape room recruitment event: Description and lessons learned

Background: The U.S. nursing workforce is facing a severe shortage of professionals due to an anticipated retirement of more than 500,000 RNs in the next 5 years. Method: An Escape to Nursing event was created and delivered in a rural medical center college of nursing in the spring of 2017. This faculty team developed four distinct rooms that were designed with key nursing concepts and patient health conditions. Recruits worked in teams to solve the patient health care puzzle, which then enabled them to proceed to the next room. Results: Feedback was positive from the recruits, including comments about expanding the game to more health care scenarios and reaching out to more recruits. Additional recruitment may lead to better turnout of recruits. Conclusion: Linear, sequential formatting for the escape room game design is recommended for use with recruits into nursing. The use of escape rooms for recruitment is a positive activity.