Impact of a peer-to-peer escape room activity in the learning of Human Physiology of medical students from the university of Málaga.

Escape room's popularity has raised over the past years among young adults. It creates a distended competitive environment, where participants collaborate to achieve a common objective through teamwork. We decided to apply this format as a teaching method for medical students at the University of Malaga, Spain. A peer-to-peer physiological cardiorespiratory escape room was designed by intern undergraduate students, collaborating within the Department of Human Physiology. This activity integrated the contents of the Human Physiology syllabus, which were organized into four stages that culminated in a final medical case. Intern students oversaw the design, promotion, preparation and execution of the activity, and were in charge of conducting the evaluation and follow up. The escape room was done in mid-December, after all theoretical and practical contents had been delivered, for four consecutive years, improving from each year's experience. The target group for this activity were second year medical students, who were asked to team up freely in groups of four to six students before the start of the activity. The students in each group cooperated with each other while trying to solve the different puzzles and questions in each stage of the escape room. After the activity, the results of the final evaluation exam of these participants were compared against non-participants, who served as a control group. Qualitative feedback was also received from the participants