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allowed students to further hone their clinical skills during a pandemic. This experience can serve as a model for similar projects for other academic institutions to train their medical students while providing outreach, particularly to underserved populations such as rural communities.
Telemedicine has rapidly become an essential part of primary care due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, formal training in telemedicine during residency is lacking. We developed and implemented a telemedicine curriculum for a family medicine residency program and investigated its effect on resident confidence levels in practicing telemedicine.
We designed a process map of the telemedicine visit workflow at the residency clinic to identify key topics to cover in the curriculum. We created a live 50-minute didactic lecture on best practices in telemedicine, along with a quick-reference handout. We distributed pre- and postintervention surveys to current residents (N=24) to assess the effect of the educational intervention on their confidence in practicing telemedicine.
Fourteen residents (58% response rate) completed all aspects of the study including both surveys and participation in the educational intervention. Confidence levels in conducting telemedicine visits increased in three of five domains (1) virtual physical exam (
=.04), (2) visit documentation (
.03), and (3) virtually staffing with an attending (
=.04). Resident interest in using telemedicine after residency also increased following the educational intervention.
Telemedicine requires a unique skill set. Formal education on best practices improves resident confidence levels and interest in practicing telemedicine. Disodium Cromoglycate Primary care residency programs should incorporate telemedicine training to adequately prepare their graduates for clinical practice.
Telemedicine requires a unique skill set. Formal education on best practices improves resident confidence levels and interest in practicing telemedicine. Primary care residency programs should incorporate telemedicine training to adequately prepare their graduates for clinical practice.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restriction of students participating in face-to-face instruction, two medical students rapidly adapted a preclinical curriculum that virtually teaches improvement science and equips learners with the knowledge to address patient needs.
Eight first-year medical students participating in a longitudinal patient navigation and health systems science program completed 15 interactive video sessions. After learning about the Model for Improvement and various quality improvement tools, students worked in teams of four to conduct several plan-do-study-act cycles. Postsession surveys captured student satisfaction, session feedback, and reflections about conducting improvement work. Two medical students then applied conventional content analysis to identify themes to describe the data.
Student projects focused on addressing patients' health care and social resource needs through telephone and electronic interactions. Five themes were identified in the survey results (1tion-based with project work being relevant to health care priorities. Our work provides a framework for others to continue teaching this integral component of medical education.Cessation of all classroom and clinical activities in the spring of 2020 for first- and second-year medical students at the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth campus both forced and enabled revision of rural medicine instruction and experiences. Creatively utilizing rural family physicians and third-year rural physician associate medical students to interact with first-year students virtually in a number of areas and using electronic connectivity enabled the institution to continue to emphasize rural medical health issues with the students.
The rural health workforce in the United States is difficult to maintain and harder to increase. This may contribute to worse health outcomes in rural areas and threaten the sustainability of rural hospitals. Previous studies have attempted to identify medical student characteristics and strategies to help grow this workforce. In this study, we aimed to understand the needs of medical students and hospital administrators to identify potential strategies to improve the rural health workforce.
We conducted medical student and hospital administrator focus groups. We analyzed focus group data separately to identify themes, and reviewed these themes for overlap between groups and potential actionable areas. We calculated Cohen
statistics.
We identified 26 themes in the medical student focus groups, and 14 themes in the hospital administrator focus group. Of these themes, three were identical between groups (scope of practice, loan repayment and financial concerns, and exposure to rural health in training), and two were similar between the groups (family and leadership).
The identification of two themes that are similar but not identical between medical students and hospital administrators may serve as part of future strategies to improving rural physician recruitment. Future studies should determine if a shift in language or focus in these areas specifically help to improve the rural health workforce.
The identification of two themes that are similar but not identical between medical students and hospital administrators may serve as part of future strategies to improving rural physician recruitment. Future studies should determine if a shift in language or focus in these areas specifically help to improve the rural health workforce.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted graduate medical education. Family medicine residents are now doing substantial clinical work and learning from home. We continued to offer academic half-day didactics virtually, but sensed a need for daily resident education and social support, so we implemented a virtual daily noon conference to address these needs.
The virtual noon conferences used web-based technology and had weekly organ system themes with consistent daily learning activities like cases and review questions. Four key components made the conferences collaborative and inclusive; they were led by residents, required minimal preparation by using available materials, were interactive, and promoted social connection with wellness activities. We evaluated the impact on resident-perceived knowledge and wellness over 6 weeks with weekly surveys for residents attending at least one conference that week and a postintervention survey.
Of 66 responses to the weekly surveys, 98% agreed that noon conferences helped to increase knowledge and social connection.
