The primary goal of this meta-analysis is to explore the five factors of knowledge, teamwork, learning satisfaction, anxiety, and interprofessional ability to determine the value of escape rooms in medical education. Up to January 2023, we searched ScienceDirect, Scopus, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI, and the Cochrane Library for pertinent works in either English or Chinese. The Risk of Bias 2 (RoB 2) tool and Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) were used to assess the quality of studies. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were used to assess statistical heterogeneity, and I2 was used to measure it. Overall, escape rooms had a more significant positive effect than traditional learning on knowledge (standardized mean difference [SMD]: 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.36-1.33), teamwork (SMD: 4.91; 95% CI: 4.58-5.24), learning satisfaction (MD: 0.36; 95% CI: 0.08-0.64), and interprofessional ability (SMD: 1.04, 95% CI: 0.81-1.27). Moreover, the impact of escape rooms on anxiety also had significant effects (SMD: -8.23, 95% CI: -11.64 to -4.82). Escape rooms affect medical students' knowledge, teamwork, learning satisfaction, interprofessional ability, and anxiety. The findings of this study can be used as evidence that escape rooms is a more effective method than traditional teaching for improving active learning.
Keywords: escape room; knowledge; meta-analysis; students.