Once COVID restrictions allowed, staff members from Flinders University, Poche Centre and Indigenous Allied Health Australia, joined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members at a workshop on Larrakia Country in Darwin.

The group participated in Flinders NT’s educational escape room, Nana’s Nightmare, and then spent the afternoon brainstorming ideas to co-design a new escape scenario. This new escape room, and its accompanying education session, will teach health care students about teamwork and interprofessional practice in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. Participants were tasked with using a strengths-based approach and calling on their own knowledge and experience and those of others in the community to develop ideas.

The collaboration resulted in much laughter, some great ideas, a list of learning objectives for the escape room, and lots of work ahead to pull everything together.

Once the props, puzzles and lesson plan prototype are developed, workshop participants will be invited back to trial the new escape room. Their experience and advice will be sought on engagement, learning potential for students and to ensure messaging and appropriateness of cultural content were retained through development.

If you are a university health professional student in Darwin in 2021, ask us about the opportunity to have some fun while learning in Care on Country: Getting out of Gammongedawei.

This project was funded through Flinders University College of Medicine and Public Health, Capacity Building Funds. We also acknowledge the advisory support provided by Dr Maree Meredith.