A HAME Signature CME Format

Case-based clinical reasoning, structured as an escape room.

An immersive, team-based CME activity HAME designs around real patient cases. ACCME-accredited. Built built for organizations that want clinicians to engage deeply, apply clinical reasoning, and remember the learning afterward.

What it is

CME activity, structured for active learning.

An Escape Room CME activity is a team-based clinical decision-making experience. A realistic patient case is the starting point. Clinicians work in small teams, using reasoning, calculation, and discussion to unlock evidence-based clues. A faculty-led debrief at the end reinforces the learning objectives and connects the experience back to clinical practice.

Beyond the format, it follows the same ACCME standards as any HAME CME activity. Learning objectives. Faculty disclosures. Evaluations. AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. The escape room structure is the delivery mechanism. The educational design remains rigorous, intentional, and clinically grounded.

How a session unfolds

From briefing to debrief in 60 minutes.

5 minutes

Briefing

Faculty introduce the patient case and frame the clinical question. Teams form, learning objectives are made explicit, and the rules of the activity are set.

40 minutes

The activity

Teams work through evidence-based clues that mirror real clinical reasoning. Reaching the right diagnosis or treatment plan requires applying current guidelines, calculations, and clinical judgment.

10 minutes

Debrief

Faculty walk through the case decisions, surface common reasoning errors, and connect each decision point back to the learning objectives. The hardest puzzles get the most attention here.

5 minutes

Evaluation & credit

Participants complete the activity evaluation digitally. CME credit is processed and certificates are issued through HAME's standard accredited workflow.

The design

Why we build them this way.

Built on real cases.

Every Escape Room CME activity is anchored to an actual clinical scenario. Faculty subject matter experts develop the case, the clues, and the decision points. The activity teaches what it teaches because the clinical content is real.

Team-based by design.

Clinical decision-making rarely happens in isolation. Working in teams mirrors how clinicians actually consult, debate, and decide. The format makes peer learning a feature, not an accident.

Accreditation, first.

The escape room is the delivery mechanism. The ACCME-accredited educational design is the substance. Learning objectives, disclosures, evaluations, and credit certification all run through HAME's standard accredited workflow.

2024 · The original

The Hepatitis C escape room.

HAME's first Escape Room CME activity, built for SEIPR 2024.

HAME's first Escape Room CME activity, designed for the annual congress of the Sociedad de Enfermedades Infecciosas de Puerto Rico. The activity centered on Hepatitis C clinical decision-making, walking teams of clinicians through a case that required current treatment guidelines, evidence interpretation, and patient management reasoning.

This activity established the format that HAME has continued to develop. The architecture, the pacing, the faculty-led debrief structure, the integration with accredited educational design — all of it was prototyped here.

Specialty Infectious disease

Clinical focus Hepatitis C

Setting SEIPR Congress 2024

Format Team-based, in-person

2025 · Flagship

Operation: Hidden Strain.

HIV clinical reasoning, built for SEIPR 2025.

Focused on HIV clinical decision-making. Operation: Hidden Strain expanded the format with a richer narrative arc and a denser web of clinical clues, while keeping the same accredited educational scaffolding.

This is the activity HAME points to most often when explaining what an Escape Room CME activity actually is. It has continued to inform how HAME thinks about scaling the format to other specialties.

A medical school subsequently reached out to HAME about adapting the format for their curriculum.