Learning Communities Engage Medical Students: A COVID-19 Virtual Conversation Series.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Public Health
• Physician Training

Background:

• COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted medical education and student community.
• Medical students faced challenges in peer interaction and understanding the evolving healthcare landscape.
• The Learning Community (LC) program aimed to mitigate these challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of a virtual conversation series on medical students' understanding of COVID-19.
• To evaluate the program's effectiveness in fostering a sense of community among medical students.
• To explore the utility of online platforms in medical education during a pandemic.

Main Methods:

• Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSU SoM) implemented an online Virtual Conversation series via Zoom.
• Physicians and residents on the COVID-19 frontlines engaged in 40-minute discussions with medical students.
• Electronic surveys (Qualtrics) with Likert scale, open text, and ranking questions were used for data collection.

Main Results:

• 55% of medical students reported gaining new information about COVID-19 from physicians' perspectives.
• 62% of medical students found the Virtual Conversation series 'extremely useful'.
• The series provided insights into succeeding on rotations, residency applications, telemedicine, patient encounters, and frontline realities.

Conclusions:

• The Virtual Conversation series enhanced medical students' understanding of the healthcare landscape and their future roles.
• The program successfully fostered community and connectedness among medical students during the pandemic.
• This initiative demonstrated the value of online learning in adapting medical education to real-world health crises.