Improving Pediatric Nursing Undergraduate Education: An Escape Room on Dehydration in Children
Trial statusNot yet recruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age20-32
SponsorGazi University
About this trial
Nursing education aims to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors required for safe and effective professional practice. However, traditional teacher-centered approaches are often insufficient for developing competencies such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, communication, and teamwork.Consequently, innovative student-centered teaching strategies are increasingly being integrated into nursing education.Game-based learning is one such strategy that enhances engagement, motivation, active participation, and collaborative learning. Among GBL approaches, the educational escape room combines gamification with problem-solving by requiring students to work collaboratively under time constraints to solve realistic clinical scenarios. This method promotes active learning while strengthening communication, teamwork, leadership, and clinical reasoning skills. Educational escape rooms have been successfully implemented in several areas of nursing education, including women's health, pediatric care, geriatric nursing, cardiovascular diseases, clinical skills, teamwork, and leadership. Despite these developments, evidence regarding their use in pediatric nursing education remains limited.Dehydration is one of the most common pediatric health problems and requires nurses to accurately assess hydration status, recognize clinical findings, and implement appropriate nursing interventions. Competence in dehydration management is therefore essential for pediatric nursing students. To date, no published study has evaluated an educational escape room designed specifically to teach pediatric dehydration management.
This study aims to examine the effectiveness of an educational escape room implemented during a pediatric nursing laboratory simulation on nursing students' hydration knowledge, teamwork, and anxiety levels. It is expected that this innovative educational approach will enhance students' knowledge acquisition and teamwork skills while reducing anxiety during learning.
Eligibility criteria
This trial accepts healthy volunteersQualifiers
• Being a 3rd-year nursing student,
• Having a GPA above 2,
• Completing theoretical courses,
• Completing practical courses,
Disqualifiers
• Retaking the Pediatric Nursing course,
• Having a high school, associate's, or bachelor's degree in a health-related field,
• Having prior escape room experience.
Trial design
Design model
Parallel
Treatments tested in this trial
Escape room educational training
Other interventionThe escape room educational training consisted of a game-based learning activity designed around a pediatric dehydration management scenario. Working in small teams, nursing students completed a series of sequential clinical tasks and puzzles requiring assessment of hydration status, identification of dehydration severity, selection of appropriate nursing interventions, and clinical decision-making within a predetermined time limit. A structured debriefing session followed the activity to reinforce learning objectives and facilitate reflective learning.
Treatment groups
84 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groupsGroup A: Intervention GroupExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Group B: Control GroupNo intervention 0 interventions
Trial outcomes
Primary outcomes
1
Hydration Knowledge Quiz
Developed by researchers using literature to assess hydration status in the pediatric age group (source). The questions are in a 5-option multiple-choice format. There are a total of 10 questions. The questions will be sent to 10 academic experts in the field to evaluate content validity. After the test, Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) value, item difficulty, and discrimination will be analyzed to test its reliability.
Time frame
Baseline (immediately before the intervention) and immediately after completion of the educational escape room (approximately 60 minutes later).2
State Anxiety Scale
State anxiety will be assessed using the State Anxiety Scale (SAS), which measures participants' current level of anxiety in response to a specific situation. The scale consists of 20 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale, with higher total scores indicating higher levels of state anxiety. The scale will be administered immediately before and after the educational escape room intervention to evaluate changes in students' situational anxiety associated with the learning activity.
Time frame
Baseline (immediately before the intervention) and immediately after completion of the educational escape room (approximately 60 minutes later).3
Collaboration Scale
Adapted into Turkish by Yerlikaya and Doğruyol (2020) based on the Cooperation and Competitiveness Scale, this is an 11-item, 5-point Likert-type scale. Scores on the scale range from 11 to 55, with higher scores indicating stronger cooperative tendencies. The scale is divided into three sub-dimensions: emotions, behaviors, and beliefs. The original 16-item scale underwent validity and reliability testing during its adaptation into Turkish (Yılmaz and Bayram, 2025; Yerlikaya and Doğruyol, 2020).
Time frame
Baseline (immediately before the intervention) and immediately after completion of the educational escape room (approximately 60 minutes later).4
Gameful Experience (GAMEX) Gaming Experience Scale
The scale developed by Eppman et al. (2018) is used to evaluate the gaming experience. This five-point Likert-type scale, which can be completed by students or researchers, consists of six sub-dimensions (enjoyment, engagement, creative thinking, influence, absence of adverse effects, and dominance) and 27 items. Each item is scored between 1 and 5, with a minimum score of 27 and a maximum score of 135 for the entire scale. In the original version of the scale, the Cronbach's alpha value for the entire scale is 0.89, while the Cronbach's alpha values for the sub-dimensions range from 0.84 to 0.96. In the Turkish validity and reliability study, the total Cronbach's alpha value was 0.93, and the Cronbach's alpha values for the sub-dimensions ranged from 0.67 to 0.92 (Dönmez, Çalık, Kabal and Kapucu, 2024; Eppmann, Bekk and Klein, 2018).
Time frame
Immediately after completion of the educational escape room (same day)Locations
Sponsors and contacts
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Source ClinicalTrials.gov
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