St. Luke's Anderson Campus Enternal Medicine Residency - Escape Room Feb. 24, 2022

POMA president Dr. Joe Zawisza had a great visit w/ the St. Luke's-Anderson Emergency Medicine program after they made it out of an escape room. Funds for the evening were made available through a grant from the POMA Resident Wellness initiative, funded by the POMA Foundation....

1. What was the general understanding of the purpose of the project/program by participants?

It was the understanding of the participants, the emergency medicine residents at St. Luke’s Anderson, that the purpose of this wellness event was to help build strong bonds between residents and to encourage us to work together, both during the event and in the future.

2. During the project/program, what tangible tools or strategies were demonstrated or taught (i.e, coping skills for wellness and life balance?
For our event we went to an escape room experience in Bethlehem, PA. For almost 1 hour we worked together to help solve several riddles and puzzles. It was imperative that we work together to solve these clues to escape the room in time. We had a wonderful experience and escaped the room in record time. They even put our group name on the wall! After our escape room experience, we went to a lovely dinner of pizza and spent time chatting and sharing experiences from our residency so far. This was so nice because we rarely have time to decompress in this way. From these experiences we gained stronger teamwork skills and more reliance on one another.

3. What word(s) best describes how you feel when you are experiencing stress or well-being imbalance?
The most common words I would use to describe how I feel when I am under stress would be overwhelmed, confused, downtrodden, and inadequate.

4. What suggestions do you have to increase the probability of success for the project/program for other institutions?
I think that providing residents every opportunity to get together and simply talk, without any specific agenda, can be such a team building experience. We often get bogged down with so many different to-do items that we miss opportunities to just talk and grow together. We need more of that!

5. What do you intend to do, upon returning to work, that you learned and practiced during the activity, that will improve your response to stressful situations
After this experience I will be far more likely to reach out to my co-residents when I am in need of guidance or I need someone to vent to. We have grown together after this experience, and I appreciate the opportunity to get together.